The aims of the book - written by a practising engineer for practising engineers - are to provide an understanding of the basic principles of sonar and, to develop formulae and "rules of thumb" for sonar design and performance analysis. Ashley Waite uses his long experience in the design, trials and performance analysis of sonar systems to provide practical guidance and solutions to problems encountered by sonar engineers and technicians.

The books divides into the following parts:

• Equipment parameters: the motion of sound in an elastic medium; definitions of sound intensity and source level; the use of projector arrays to increase the source level; the use of hydrophone arrays to improve the signal to noise ratio of a wanted sound.
• The propagation of sound in the sea and the backgrounds to detection: spreading and absorption losses; propagation modes and simple modelling; noise and reverberation; the sonar equations
• Practical sonar systems: passive and active sonar systems; passive broadband, narrowband, intercept and communications (as a special case of intercept) sonars; active sonars for the detection of submarines, mines and torpedoes.