How It Works

Sonar utilizes sound propagation to detect objects, navigate, and communicate. Through acoustic location, Sonar can be used to find an object and tell how far away that object is.

As shown above, a transmitter sends out a pulse of sound towards an object, the sound wave is then reflected off of the object and sent back to the source.

The distance of the object is determined by the amount of time it takes for a reflection to return after the pulse is sent out. This can be affected by several factors such as the density of the media which the sound is traveling through and if the object itself is moving or not.

To find the direction of the object, several receivers are used to signal when a reflection passes by them.

The above picture shows an initial wave being sent out in all directions. The wave reflects off of the foreign object and returns towards the source of the sound. As the reflection passes over the receivers, each receiver is activated in the order which the wave passed over (They are numbered as they would have activated in this example).

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