Peter Dobbins 2007 Bioinspir. Biomim. 2 19 doi:10.1088/1748-3182/2/1/003
Peter Dobbins
Show affiliationsObservations suggest that dolphin sonars function well in the very shallow, reverberant, near-shore region of the ocean, and significantly out-perform man-made systems under such conditions. The echolocation characteristics of many small cetaceans have been measured directly and the high performance of biosonar systems is not in question, but explanations for their resolution, target detection, localization and tracking abilities are inadequate and deserve further investigation. The dolphin's lower jaw has been identified as part of an echo-receptor, and several hypotheses have been proposed to explain this. In one of these, the regularity of dolphin teeth was considered as a sonar array. This paper explores the physics of such systems with models based on established radar and sonar principles, and using data from various dolphin species. The insights gained from this modelling then lead to speculative proposals for new sonar receiver concepts that may have advantages over more conventional designs in shallow water operation.
43.80.Ka Sound production by animals: mechanisms, characteristics, populations, biosonar
43.80.Lb Sound reception by animals: anatomy, physiology, auditory capacities, processing
43.30.Yj Transducers and transducer arrays for underwater sound; transducer calibration
Issue 1 (March 2007)
Received 15 December 2006, accepted for publication 14 February 2007
Published 14 March 2007
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