Analysis of non-Rayleigh reverberation model with ocean experiment data in coastal area

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to improve active sonar detection performance in shallow water A stochastic-like model multivariate elliptically contoured (MEC) distributions is defined to model reverberation, which helps to reveal structure information of target signatures. Design/methodology/approach - Active sonar systems have been developed with wider transmission bandwidths and larger aperture receiving array, which improve the signal-to-noise ratio and reverberation power ratio after matched filtering and beamforming. But. it has changed the statistical distribution of the reverberation-induced envelope from the traditionally assumed Rayleigh distribution. The MEC is a kind of generalized non-Gaussian distribution model. The authors theoretically derive the compound Gaussian, Rayleigh-mixture, Weibull, K distributions are all special cases of MEC. It is known that Weibull and If distributions have obvious heavy-tail than Rayleigh distribution MEC is a suitable model to characterize non-Rayleigh heavy-tailed distribution of reverberation Findings - The analysis of test data shows reverberation envelopes obviously deviate Rayleigh distribution. In a broad non-Gaussian framework, reverberation is modelled as MEC distribution, which is suitable to characterize non-Rayleigh reverberation. The received data in trials validate the effectiveness of MEC model The real data envelops follows K distribution, which is a special case of MEC So, the MEC can be applied to develop novel signal-processing algorithms that mitigate or account for the effects of the heavy-tailed reverberation distributions oil the target detection. Research limitations/implications - The limited sea test data are the main limitation to prove model validation in further. Practical implications - A very useful model for representing reverberation in shallow-water Originality/value - The MECs in fact represent all attractive set data model for adaptive array, and it provides a theoretic framework to design an optimal or sub-optimal detector