Ultrasonic bistatic Doppler sonar in air for personnel motion detection

The National Center for Physical Acoustics (NCPA) at the University of Mississippi is working on the application of ultrasonic Doppler sonars in air for personnel motion detection. Two traditional Doppler sonar configurations, a monostatic and a bistatic, are being studied. In the monostatic configuration, the distance between the transmitter and the receiver is small. The proximity of the source to the receiver places a limitation on the system associated with the overloading of the receivers' input due to acoustic energy leakage from the transmitters' output. The maximum range of detection is therefore limited by the dynamic range of the acquisition system. In a bistatic Doppler ultrasonic sonar, the source and receiver are spaced apart and the acoustic energy along the direct path does not constrain the maximum acoustic power level output of the transmitter. In a monostatic configuration the acoustic signal suffers from beam spreading and natural absorption during propagation from the transmitter to the target and from the target back to the receiver. In a bistatic configuration the acoustic propagation is in one direction only and theoretically the detection distance can be twice the monostatic distance. For comparison the experiments of a human walking in a building hallway using the bistatic and monostaic Doppler sonars in air were conducted. The experimental results for human signatures from these Doppler sonars are presented and discussed.