Multi-everything Sonar Simulator (MESS)

Abstract

This paper describes the multi-everything sonar simulator (MESS), a system for performing general active or passive undersea sonar simulations. It is designed to provide element or beam-level data, in the time or frequency domain, in either a real or basebanded format. It is capable of handling any number and variety of sources, receivers, and targets with arbitrary, rigid-body trajectories in three dimensions. In general, simulated data will contain contributions from all sound sources: ambient noise, reverberation, source direct blasts, target echoes, target radiated noise and receiver self noise. The underlying signal generation, acoustic propagation, and physical interactions are performed using the sonar simulation toolset (SST), which in turn uses the comprehensive acoustic sonar system (CASS) and Gaussian ray bundle (GRAB) algorithm for eigenray generation. Acoustic propagation is ray-based only but is range dependent. The system may be used for generating active, passive or combined active/passive scenarios. It may also be used to inject active or passive targets into existing, real-world data sets