Design of a dynamic multi-target simulating system for active sonar

This paper describes a dynamic multi-target simulating system for active sonar, a system for simulating the signal received by multiple receive hydrophones of sonar for a scenario with multiple targets from different directions. Significant challenges in the system design are the capabilities of real-time processing and high-speed data transmission. Due to the demand of the system, the embedded soft real-time processor, high speed hard real-time module, FPGA parallel technology and LabVIEW graphical programming tool are used in the system to generate the sonar simulating signal in real time. Finally, the results show that the system can simulate the scenario with eight targets. Moreover much more are simulated, such as the target direction, distance, Doppler stretch, target strength, etc. Meanwhile, there are 48 output channels in the system, so the system can simulate forty-eight hydrophones in sonar. The results of the system also show that the deviation of target distance is less than 1m, the deviation of target direction is less than 0.5°, and the deviation of time delay among the output channels are less than 0.2μs.