Drastically reduced sensor hardware for solvable chaos-based sonar

An acoustic ranging demonstration is presented in a reflective environment using solvable chaos with novel and practical hardware advances. Previously, solvable chaos was optimally detected using ideal alignment, random codes and an 11 element microphone array for environments free of multipath reflections. In this work, ranging experiments were performed with drastically reduced sensor hardware and measurements were extended to include non-ideal effects such as multipath and angle misalignment from reduced line of sight (LOS). Importantly, this new scheme not only reduces the size and power of these systems by over 83%, a novel triggering technique allows for triggering on targeted bit sequences and produces sidelobe levels that are independent of oscillator dynamics. Ranging results from a closed, reflective cavity obtained using a 10 kHz solvable chaotic oscillator are reported. Measured sidelobe levels were typically between -1.80 dB and -15.85 dB. The resulting demonstration shows successful ranging despite drastically reduced hardware and environmental imperfections.