Design and output control technique of sonar transmitter considering impedance variation of underwater acoustic transducer

The active sonar transmission system consists of a transmitter that outputs an electrical signal and an underwater acoustic transducer that converts the amplified electrical signal into an acoustic signal. In general, the transmitter output characteristics are dependent on load impedance, and an underwater acoustic transducer, which is a transmitter load, has a characteristic that the electrical impedance varies largely according to frequency when driven. In such a variable impedance condition, the output of the active sonar transmission system may become unstable. Hence, this paper proposes a design and control technique of a sonar transmitter for transmitting a stable transmission signal even under variable impedance conditions of an underwater acoustic transducer in an active sonar transmission system. The electrical impedance characteristics of the underwater acoustic transducer are experimentally analyzed, and the sonar transmitter is composed of a single-phase full-bridge inverter, an LC filter, and a matching circuit. In this paper, the design and output control method of the sonar transmitter is proposed to protect the transmitter and transducer. It can secure stable output voltage characteristics even if it transmits the Linear Frequency Modulation (LFM) signal. The validity is verified through the simulation and the experiment.