Transfer of Uncertainties through Physical-acoustical-sonar End-to-end Systems: a Conceptual Basis

An interdisciplinary team of scientists is collaborating to enhance the understanding of the uncertainty in the ocean environment, including the sea bottom, and characterize its impact on tactical system performance. To accomplish these goals quantitatively an end-to-end system approach is necessary. The conceptual basis of this approach and the framework of the end-to-end system, including its components, is the subject of this presentation. Specifically, we present a generic approach to characterize variabilities and uncertainties arising from regional scales and processes, construct uncertainty models for a generic sonar system, and transfer uncertainties from the acoustic environment to the sonar and its signal processing. Illustrative examples are presented to highlight recent progress toward the development of the methodology and components of the system.