A PC based coherent sonar workstation for experimental underwater acoustics

Apart from water, the most important component in an experimental underwater acoustics program is a versatile sonar system for transmitting, receiving, and recording acoustic waveforms. At the Underwater Research Lab (URL) at Simon Fraser University a simple yet fully coherent sonar workstation has been developed by making use of ZBM compatible personal computer (PC) technology, commercially available digital signal processing (DSP) hardware, and a small amount of custom electronics. The resulting sonar operates at carrier frequencies between 25 kHz and 500 kHz and can incorporate a variety of sonar signal processing tasks in real or pseudo-real time, yet, required a total investment of less than $5000. This paper discusses the design and performance of the URL coherent sonar.