Color photo of student.

Thomas Blanford

Research Associate Professor
Phone: (603) 862-3202
Office: Morse Hall, Durham, NH 03824
Websites:

My research primarily investigates acoustic sensing in underwater environments, where problems of physics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and computer science all intersect. Acoustic sensors are often complicated devices, with mechanical, electrical, and acoustical elements. Each of these components, along with the environment, all color and influence the signals that the sensor observes. I am particularly interested in understanding the relationships and interactions between the stimuli, the sensor, and the environment. This research often involves developing models to predict performance and interactions and designing, building, and testing new sensors (including transducers, electronics, and signal processing).

Courses Taught

  • EOS 809: Acoustic Measurements

Education

  • Ph.D., Acoustics, Pennsylvania State University
  • B.S., Electrical Engineering, University of Notre Dame

Research Interests

  • Acoustics
  • Sensing Devices and Transducers
  • Signal Processing
  • Navigation & Guidance Systems
  • Sonar Systems

Selected Publications

  • Blanford, T. E., Hare, J., Lyons, A. P., Gilman, H. L., & Venegas, G. R. (2026). Estimation of decorrelation rates of scattering from a heterogeneous seafloor.. JASA Express Lett, 6(8). doi:10.1121/10.0044873

  • Blanford, T. E., Brown, D. C., & Johnson, S. F. (2026). Application of a Delay Multiply and Sum Reconstruction Algorithm to a Synthetic Aperture Imaging Sonar. IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, 51(3), 2242-2257. doi:10.1109/joe.2026.3697320

  • Dalton, K. S., Blanford, T. E., & Brown, D. C. (2025). A broadband, bistatic model for the spatial coherence of diffuse scattering.. J Acoust Soc Am, 158(2), 1491-1507. doi:10.1121/10.0039044

  • Blanford, T. E. (2025). Occlusion and height estimation using the coherence of multi-static synthetic aperture sonar images.. JASA Express Lett, 5(6). doi:10.1121/10.0036836

  • Blanford, T. E., Williams, D. P., Park, J. D., Reinhardt, B. T., Dalton, K. S., Johnson, S. F., & Brown, D. C. (2024). An in-air synthetic aperture sonar dataset of target scattering in environments of varying complexity.. Sci Data, 11(1), 1196. doi:10.1038/s41597-024-04050-0

  • Dalton, K. S., Brown, D. C., & Blanford, T. E. (2024). Combining range-general and range-specific techniques for late-time focused image reconstructiona).. JASA Express Lett, 4(3). doi:10.1121/10.0025237

  • Blanford, T. E., Brown, D. C., & Meyer, R. J. (2023). A Comparison of Two Methods for Simulating Spatial Coherence-Based Motion Estimation. IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, 48(4), 1280-1288. doi:10.1109/joe.2023.3297229

  • Reed, A., Kim, J., Blanford, T., Pediredla, A., Brown, D., & Jayasuriya, S. (2023). Neural Volumetric Reconstruction for Coherent Synthetic Aperture Sonar. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 42(4), 1-20. doi:10.1145/3592141

  • Brown, D. C., & Blanford, T. E. (2023). Near range breakdown of the phase centre approximation. Electronics Letters, 59(12). doi:10.1049/ell2.12777

  • Goehle, G., Cowen, B., Blanford, T. E., Daniel Park, J., & Brown, D. C. (2023). Approximate extraction of late-time returns via morphological component analysis.. J Acoust Soc Am, 153(5), 2838. doi:10.1121/10.0019415

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  • Most Cited Publications