DRDC Starfish Acoustic Sentinel and Phase Gradient Histogram Tracking

Abstract

DRDC - Atlantic Research Centre, an agency of the Canadian Department of National Defence, has developed a prototype multi-influence underwater surveillance sensor called the Starfish. The Starfish has acoustic, electric, and magnetic field sensors, and onboard signal processing for target detection and tracking. The acoustic sensors are in the form of a seven-element cross-dipole hydrophone array, with two hydrophones along each orthogonal axis direction and one at the array centre. Acoustic target detection is performed using both time-domain and frequency-domain Sentinel algorithms. The Sentinel algorithms use parallel exponential filters, with the frequency-domain algorithm using parallel filters in each frequency bin. A Phase Gradient bearing estimation algorithm is used to perform the acoustic target tracking. This is a frequency-domain algorithm that estimates the gradient of the spatial phase of the incoming acoustic signal, and directly computes the wavevector of the acoustic arrival in each frequency bin. A Histogram Tracking procedure is used to display and determine the track angles for a broad-band acoustic target. This paper will discuss the details of the frequency-domain Acoustic Sentinel algorithm and the Phase Gradient bearing estimation algorithm with Histogram Tracking.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 01, 2015
Accession Number
AD1004323

Entities

People

  • C. E. Lucas
  • G. J. Heard
  • N. Pelavas

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acoustic Detectors
  • Algorithms
  • Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
  • Computer Simulations
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • Frequency
  • Frequency Bands
  • Frequency Domain
  • Hydrophones
  • National Security
  • Operating Systems
  • Security
  • Signal Processing
  • Target Detection
  • Target Tracking
  • Time Domain

Fields of Study

  • Engineering

Readers

  • Acoustical Oceanography.
  • Approximation Theory.
  • Sensor Fusion and Tracking Systems.