Marine Mammal Detection: Call-Up Against the Noise Monitoring Standing Offer
Abstract
This report documents the work done to prototype a marine mammal detection system. The resulting system will support environmental mitigation measures prior to, and during, active sonar trials and exercises. A working application was delivered at the end of the call-up that allows a user to configure and run detection processing, with live updates provided, or to post-analyze data from a previous detection run. Once selected, an image of the detection and the corresponding detection log entries are presented to the user. The user can also listen to the detection and bring up a time series plot of the raw data. A cursor can be used to measure times and frequencies on the detection image. This system was used to process 30 minutes of Right whale data collected using sonobuoys. Desharnais collected this data set in the Bay of Fundy during the summer of 1999. This data set included dead channels, considerable radio frequency (RF) interference and a digital data channel. Fifty-seven valid detections were made while the sixteen false alarms that did occur were easily classified and rejected. No analysis of missed contact was made. After a quick look at the data, it took an acoustic operator less than a second to distinguish a valid call from a false alarm as he scrolled through the results. Aural listening helped to quickly distinguish valid vs. invalid contacts. There is still considerable room for improvement in the automatic classification and graphical user interface (GUI) layout but, as a prototype, it demonstrates that good detections can be made and classified using a system such as this. The processing stream is based primarily on existing signal processing library (SPLIB) and sonar library (SONLIB) modules developed under previous call-ups. The GUI was based on existing QT-based widgets developed under the Omni Passive Display (OPD) call-up.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA472971
Entities
People
- Brad Glessing
- Joe Hood
Organizations
- Defence Research and Development Canada