A few comments on passive synthetic aperture sonar in honor of Ed Sullivan

Abstract

I came to know Ed Sullivan after submitting a paper on passive synthetic aperture sonar for publication in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. At that time, he was an Associate Editor of the journal. I knew of him, by reputation, of course. Only after the paper reviews came back did I get to know him, the person, the hard-core, old-school signal processor and physicist. At first, I simply tried to humor him to get the paper accepted for publication, figuring that quotes from a few of his papers sprinkled here and there would suffice. But after spending time expanding my knowledge of his work, I developed a deep appreciation for the foundation in signal processing he and colleagues had built. The published version of our paper was significantly improved as a result. This talk presents some of Ed Sullivan's results on model-based signal processing and its application to passive synthetic aperture sonar, along with some of our published results. Its main purpose, however, is to serve as a reminder that we all stand on the foundation built by those who have gone before. [Work supported by the Office of Naval Research.]