The passive sonar equation - effects of additive interference

An equation representing the statistical variability of SONAR parameters is cast into a form allowing computation of the effects of additive interference. The technique may be applicable in cases where electronics noise, structural (platform) noise, or flow noise contribute to degradation of detection performance. The passive SONAR equation is factored to represent stochastic "processed signal" and "processed noise" terms, which are treated as independent log - normally distributed variables. A novel graphical technique computes the detection threshold penalty attributable to interference added to the two-variable process. Parametric studies are performed, characterizing detection penalty as a function of the standard deviations of the signal and noise processes.