Charles H. Jones

Interlaced sonar system

A sonar system which insonifies a target area in a plurality of distinct and separated insonified regions as a result of an acoustic transmission and thereafter fills in the blank regions upon subsequent transmissions, with each transmission always leaving a space between insonified regions, which is filled in by a subsequent transmission or transmissions.

Wide angle acoustic camera

A conical acoustic lens in conjunction with a ring of transducer elements located on a circle disposed above the lens is utilized to form a plurality of radial beams for imaging a target area beneath the apparatus. The transducers may occupy the fully 360° of the circle or a sector less than 360° in which the case the apparatus may be rotated to give full 360° coverage.

Electro-acoustic transducer with line focus

1. A transducer for translating compressional waves in a liquid medium into electrical waves in an electric circuit and vice versa comprising an elongated transducer element having a spherically concave active face disposed with its smaller dimension between two circles of latitude spaced apart in a hemisphere a distance substantially equal to the wavelength in the liquid medium of a predetermined operating frequency.

Sonar ranging system

A passive ranging system is disclosed wherein the transducer array has itseam pattern modulated so as to match the arrival angles of the different wave fronts arriving at the array from various target distances. The beams are formed by orientating a multiplicity of readout arms at appropriate angles with respect to a recording medium which has the individual signals detected by each transducer of the array recorded thereon in different horizontal tracks. The readout arms thus simultaneously scan all of the signals associated with the arrival angles for a particular range and produce a signal whose amplitude is a measure of the probability of a target at this range.

Image formation by multiple shading

A novel method for obtaining an improved image from an array of hydrophones is described. The technique involves generating a set of different images. These images are then combined using an appropriate algorithm. The composite image is superior to any one of the original images. The technique achieves good angular resolution with low spurious side lobes. Three examples are given for a 16‐element array using computer simulation. The procedure is applicable to line arrays, planar arrays, and conformal arrays.