Oceanic incoherent Doppler sonar spectral analysis by conventional and finite-parameter modeling methods

The spectral structure of oceanic incoherent Doppler sonar data is analyzed with Fourier and two finite-parameter modeling methods (Spectral Moment Estimation (SME) and AutoRegressive (AR)). Fourier spectral analysis, applied to long-range segments of echo return data, validates a theoretical point scattering model. It is demonstrated that Fourier spectral techniques, applied to data from incoherent sonar systems, cannot be used to probe oceanic spectral and velocity fields on the scales that frequently are important in oceanographic applications. The finite-parameter methods model the spectral structure on closely spaced range intervals. The SME method calculates the first moment of the Doppler spectrum at each range interval and the AR method provides spectral estimates at these same intervals. Trade-offs in estimating scatterer radial velocity using the various algorithms are considered. It is shown that a frequency-integrated AR technique has velocity estimation performance comparable to the SME method. In addition, the AR technique reveals that several regions of data possess asymmetric spectral structure. The implications of this spectral structure for oceanic velocity estimates are discussed.