A solution to the problem of simultaneous classification and localization of underwater objects from their acoustic field

Abstract

This paper presents one of the solutions to the problem of simultaneous classification and localization of underwater objects from its acoustical field. It was shown that both problems (classification and localization) have some common features that allow to consider them as one mutual problem which can be solved by maximum likelihood method. The solution takes into account: ‐ the fundamental physical representations of the transmission, propagation, reception of signals, and the measurement of their parameters against the noise background; ‐ the target parameters vector describing features of its noise radiation and motion; ‐ the parameters vector characterizing the observation conditions; ‐ the errors vector of the signal parameter measurements. The theoretical solution is illustrated by solving a relatively simple but practically important problem of classification and ranging of an underwater object from passive underwater acoustic observation data.