There’s some discussion in this post that may be of interest, but I suppose the most obvious factor to consider is response intensity peaks (which can be found using common peak finding algorithms).
The Ping Sonar has some extra coherence filtering by just smoothing results over time, but that doesn’t necessarily work well for a scanning sonar like the Ping360 because the angle changes. That said, you could still do some coherence detection by finding multiple subsequent peaks in a similar region across profiles, and if you’re able to track the vehicle’s location then you could also have spatial correlation of objects each time the sonar passes over the same region.
Yes, although it may not be feasible in real-time, depending on the data rate in question, and desired accuracy.