CORRELATION-BASED ANALYSIS OF A GENERALIZED TARGET DESCRIPTION

Recently, a generalized target model was proposed in the literature. T he objective of this work was to determine if the added complexity of the generalized model would allow substantially better performance, in terms of the mean-square-error and the average radius estimate, than that which could be achieved using the conventional target model. The scattering target was selected to be a hard acoustic sphere. The exper imental results indicate that the order of the generalized model is de pendent on the structure of the transmitted signal. Further, the gener alized model results in a lower mean-square-error and a more accurate estimate of the sphere radius than the conventional model hi the noise -free case. When white Gaussian noise was added to the echo, the gener alized model still retained the advantage of a lower average mean-squa re-error than the conventional model for all signal-to-noise ratios th at were tested. The generalized model produces a better radius estimat e than the conventional model at high signal-to-noise levels, but at l ow levels, the insensitivity of the conventional model to noise result ed in a better radius estimate.