Sonar and underwater acoustics
Finding, tracking and communicating with sound under water.
China leads sonar and underwater acoustics research, with 71.6% of the 10% most cited papers published 2021–2025; the United States is second with 4.1%.
Added 14 October 2026. Its top papers were checked for relevance by AI, but its keywords and topic list have not yet been reviewed by hand.
Standings
Share of the 10% most cited papers, 2021–2025; 363 papers. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method
Year by year
About 73 papers a year. Single-year moves are noise.China
Everyone else, on a larger scale
Share of the 10% most cited papers published in each year. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method
Inside the field
Always the top 10%PilotEach paper sorted into one sub-area by an AI model reading its title and abstract, then credited as usual. On 200 hand-labelled papers it chose the same sub-area, or a defensible second, 92% of the time.
| Sub-area | Papers | First | Second | Third |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sonar image detection and classification | 80 | CNChina78.2% | PLPoland5.0% | USUnited States2.7% |
| Underwater acoustic target recognition (ship-radiated noise) | 72 | CNChina85.2% | AUAustralia2.1% | IRIran1.7% |
| Underwater acoustic sensor networks: routing, MAC, localisation | 68 | CNChina60.5% | SASaudi Arabia4.9% | INIndia4.8% |
| Underwater acoustic communication (physical layer) | 44 | CNChina74.2% | ITItaly4.5% | USUnited States4.4% |
| Acoustic navigation, tracking and docking for underwater vehicles | 27 | CNChina74.2% | ITItaly7.4% | USUnited States3.7% |
| Hydrophones and fibre-optic acoustic sensors | 16 | CNChina70.9% | IRIran6.2% | SASaudi Arabia6.2% |
| Array signal processing, beamforming and direction finding | 16 | CNChina72.9% | USUnited States17.7% | INIndia3.6% |
Share of each sub-area's papers in the top 10%. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method
Earlier and recent
The same top 10%, split into 2021–2023 and 2024–2025.
Greyed rows rest on fewer than five papers of credit in one period.
Share of the 10% most cited papers: 183 papers in 2021–2023, 180 in 2024–2025. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method
2026 so far: a different count
Not the most cited papers: every 2026 paper matched so far (957), and a paper counts in full for each country on it. This year's papers are too new to rank by citations, so these shares cannot be compared with the ones above.
- CNChina69.5%of 2026 papers have an author here
- USUnited States7.7%of 2026 papers have an author here
- INIndia4.0%of 2026 papers have an author here
- KRSouth Korea3.8%of 2026 papers have an author here
- CACanada2.1%of 2026 papers have an author here
Who cites the top papers
How much more often a country's top papers are cited from home than its size predicts. Expected is the country's share of all papers in the field; the bar is the excess, in percentage points. Home citers include authors citing their own earlier work.
Based on up to 100 of each country's most cited single-country papers in the top 10%. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method
Behind the share
Institutions with the most credit
- 1CNNorthwestern Polytechnical University7.9%
- 2CNHarbin Engineering University6.7%
- 3CNNational University of Defense Technology3.5%
- 4CNXiamen University2.6%
- 5CNMinistry of Industry and Information TechnologyGovernment lab1.9%
- 6CNSoutheast University1.8%
- 7CNChinese Academy of SciencesGovernment lab1.7%
- 8CNXi’an University of Posts and Telecommunications1.7%
- 9CNShanghai Jiao Tong University1.5%
- 10CNZhejiang University1.5%
Share of the top 10%. Institutions across all 45 technologies
Who does the work
| Sector | All | CN | US | IT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Universities | 87.1% | 87.7% | 82.4% | 82.0% |
| Research facilities | 6.9% | 5.6% | 11.4% | 10.6% |
| Government labs | 5.1% | 6.5% | 0% | 3.9% |
| Other | 0.4% | 0% | 4.1% | 3.2% |
Share of credit by type of institution, overall and for the three leading countries.
Across borders
20.4% of the top 10% have authors in more than one country.
- CNUSChina with United States15
- CACNCanada with China10
- CNGBChina with United Kingdom5
- CNSGChina with Singapore5
- KRSASouth Korea with Saudi Arabia5
Most frequent pairings, by number of shared papers.
The papers behind the numbers
The five most cited papers this definition catches. If one looks out of place, the definition needs work.
- A Survey of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Formation: Performance, Formation Control, and Communication CapabilityIEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 2021CNUS469citations
- Internet of Underwater Things and Big Marine Data Analytics—A Comprehensive SurveyIEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 2021AUGB428citations
- A Gray Scale Correction Method for Side-Scan Sonar Images Considering Rugged SeafloorIEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 2023CN380citations
- Real-Time Underwater Maritime Object Detection in Side-Scan Sonar Images Based on Transformer-YOLOv5Remote Sensing, 2021CN253citations
- Underwater target recognition using convolutional recurrent neural networks with 3-D Mel-spectrogram and data augmentationApplied Acoustics, 2021197citations
More in communications and sensing
- Satellite navigationChina leads
- Inertial navigationChina leads
- RadarChina leads
- Electronic warfareChina leads
- Hyperspectral imagingChina leads
- Optical communicationChina leads
- 6G and advanced wirelessChina leads
The most technologically advanced countries, and is China ahead of the US?
How this technology is defined
A paper counts if its title or abstract matches the search below. Articles in core journals and proceedings only; retracted papers are excluded.
sonar OR "underwater acoustic" OR hydrophone OR "underwater target detection" OR "acoustic vector sensor"and its main topic in OpenAlex is one of: Underwater Vehicles and Communication Systems; Underwater Acoustics Research; Direction-of-Arrival Estimation Techniques; Advanced Fiber Optic Sensors; Target Tracking and Data Fusion in Sensor Networks. The topic check removes papers that only mention the technology.
- Papers matched, 2021–2025
- 3,602
- In the top 10%
- 363
- In the top 1%
- 39
- Countries with credit
- 37
- Credit with no known country
- 3.4%
Every one of the 472 most cited papers was checked for relevance; 11 were left out as not about sonar and underwater acoustics
The most cited of those left out:
- Deep Networks for Direction-of-Arrival Estimation in Low SNR400 citations
- Twenty-Five Years of Advances in Beamforming: From convex and nonconvex optimization to learning techniques181 citations
- A Comprehensive Review of Direction-of-Arrival Estimation and Localization Approaches in Mixed-Field Sources Scenario67 citations
- Distributed minimum error entropy Kalman filter57 citations
- Adaptive Beamforming for Cascaded Sparse Diversely Polarized Planar Array36 citations
- Converted state equation Kalman filter for nonlinear maneuvering target tracking35 citations
- Review of low cost micro remotely operated underwater vehicle32 citations
- High-Speed Obstacle Avoidance of a Large-Scale Underactuated Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Under a Finite Field of View32 citations
- A Comprehensive Review of Direction of Arrival (DoA) Estimation Techniques and Algorithms24 citations
- Underwater target detection and recognition based on cross-modal fusion of flow and electric information11 citations
- A Spatial Field-Aware Underwater Detection System Based on Active Electrosense9 citations
Definition version 0.5, pilot. It is a plain text file: copy it, change it, rerun it.