Active Sonar Target Detection Using Fractional Fourier Transform

Many studies in detection and classification of the targets in the underwater environments have been conducted for military purposes, as well as for non-military purpose. Due to the complicated characteristics of underwater acoustic signal reflecting multipath environments and spatio-temporal varying characteristics, active sonar target detection technique has been considered as a difficult technique. In this paper, we describe the basic concept of Fractional Fourier transform and optimal transform order. Then we analyze the relationship between time-frequency characteristics of an LFM signal and its spectrum using Fractional Fourier transform. Based on the analysis results, we present active sonar target detection method. To verify the performance of proposed methods, we compared the results with conventional FFT-based matched filter. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method compared to the conventional method in the aspect of AUC(Area Under the ROC Curve).