Motion estimation in wide band synthetic aperture sonar based on the raw echo data using the method of displaced phase center antenna

Phase errors in synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) imaging must be reduced to less than one eighth of a wavelength so as to avoid image destruction. Most of the phase errors occur as a result of platform motion errors, for example, sway yaw and surge that are the most important error sources. The phase error of a wide band synthetic aperture sonar is modeled and solutions to sway yaw and surge motion estimation based on the raw sonar echo data with a Displaced Phase Center Antenna (DPCA) method are proposed and their implementations are detailed in this paper. It is shown that the sway estimates can be obtained from the correlation lag and phase difference between the returns at coincident phase centers. An estimate of yaw is also possible if such a technique is applied to more than one overlapping phase center positions. Surge estimates can be obtained by identifying pairs of phase centers with a maximum correlation coefficient. The method works only if the platform velocity is low enough such that a number of phase centers from adjacent pings overlap.