50 Million Years of Waveform Design

Echo locating mammals such as bats, whales and dolphins have been using waveform diversity for over 50 million years. They vary the PRF, the power and the frequency content of the transmitted waveforms. This has enabled them to evolve highly sophisticated navigation techniques and the ability to forage for food. Moreover, recent developments in technology means that it is now possible to replicate many of the methods employed by mammals in synthetic systems such as radar and sonar. Thus echo locating mammals potentially offer valuable insights that might allow improvements in these synthetic sensor counterparts enabling autonomous navigation of platforms and automatic target classification. In this paper the authors examine the waveforms used by bats as a function of orientation and intent. The information is presented in terms forms well known to the radar community and includes, power spectra, ambiguity functions. From this analysis the authors are able to derive understanding as to how bats are exploiting waveform diversity and how this can be copied in radar and sonar systems