New Phased Array SONAR Simulator

Scientists in San Diego have developed a new simulator for phased array SONAR. The simulator produces high resolution real-time imagery and is suitable for input into a reverse beam generator for the production of conventional waterfall displays. The system runs on COTS hardware and leverages the Nvidia chip set.

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) September 14, 2004 -- Using standard PCs and the Nvidia chip set, SimVisLab has developed a high-end, real-time SONAR simulator suitable for use with phased array transducers. The simulator output was designed to drive a reverse beam former, allowing the production of conventional waterfall displays for sensor design and operator training.

Using native Nvidia GPU coding for speed, the team was able to deliver supercomputer performance on a COTS PC. Working with large bathymetry datasets and specially encoded material definitions, the simulator provides an accurate view of the ocean bottom, including acoustic shadows.

"Seeing this complex simulation run so fast on PCs is exciting. What started out taking hours per frame has been hand coded into a real-time process without a loss in fidelity", said Greg Passmore, the simulator architect.

About Sim[VisLab

SimVisLab is a private research firm focused on exotic problems. Active and past projects involve physics based simulation for specialty sensors, sonar, radar, DTV and nonlinear dynamics. The research team works on a contract basis for a variety of large and small customers.

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