Motion compensation by phase correction for synthetic‐aperture side‐scan sonar imaging

Abstract

This article presents a robust motion estimation and correction technique for the realization of synthetic-aperture sidescan sonar imaging. It utilizes the redundancy provided by the multiple-element receiver array configuration. Physical-array subimages are used for the estimation of the motion errors between adjacent receiver positions. Subsequently, the motion errors are formulated in the form of phase perturbations and are corrected accordingly by making adjustments to the wave-field data samples prior to the formation of synthetic-aperture images.