Wavelet processing for wideband scattering function estimation

Signal processing of acoustic signals scattered from distributed objects and in time-varying environments has become an increasing challenge. A major difficulty is to estimate or characterize the distributed scattering phenomena. Often, a spreading function or a scattering function are used to characterize the spreading that results when the signal is scattered. This article shows how wavelet processing can be used to more accurately characterize signal spreading when the transmit waveform has a large bandwidth. This wavelet processing is then used to estimate the wideband scattering function associated with scattering from distributed objects or within complex time-varying channels.