In the single input multiple output (SIMO) sonar system, the transmitting antennas send coherent waveforms which form a highly focused beam. In the multiple input multiple output (MIMO) sonar system, the transmitter sends independent broad waveforms. These waveforms can be extracted at the receiver by a matched filter bank. The extracted signals can be used to obtain more diversity or to improve the spatial resolution for clutter. MIMO sonar can achieve superior performance through waveform diversity over SIMO sonar. This paper work focuses on the comparison of the performance of MIMO sonar against SIMO sonar for the target detection and localization. The capon beam forming problem for SIMO and MIMO sonar systems is formulated and the two systems are being compared for the case where the transmitter and receiver arrays are co-located. The capon beam formed output in MIMO offers advantages in terms of resolution and output signal to noise ratio compared to that of SIMO. Simulation results confirm the theoretical observations and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed MIMO sonar technique
