Synthetic Aperture Sonar Technology Review

Sonar imaging has numerous applications in the underwater domain. High-resolution sonar images are useful in marine research, underwater construction work, offshore oil and gas, search for objects, and in the military sector. Common in many applications is the desire for higher resolution, better image quality, longer range, and smaller hardware footprint. Synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) technology can improve resolution and/or range substantially compared to traditional technology. Recent developments in SAS make this technology more available now. This paper gives a review of SAS technology and shows example of SAS applications. The paper lists the current state-of-the-art and the future trends of SAS.