NICOP - ACOUSTIC SEABED CHARACTERISATION USING AUV TOWED THIN LINE ARRAY DURING THE SBC 2017 EXPERIMENT
Abstract
The objective of this proposal is to employ an AUV-based thin line towed arraysystem for seabed characterisation studies during the ~Seabed Characterisation2017 Experiment~ planned in Mar 2017 near East Coast of USA. An AUV based seabed characterisation system has many advantageous compared to conventional ship-based towed array system as listed below~ -They can operate much closer to the seabed putting less demand on the transmitted energy and hence more environmental friendly~ -Operation closer to the seabed also improves the signal to noise ratio and this is important especially when the seabed is muddy or soundabsorbing~ -As they operate away from the surface they are less susceptible to sea- surface activities and therefore provides a more stable platform~ -If equipped with side scan sonar or multi-beam echo sounder, the system provides -a -multi-sensor -platform -for -measurement -of -searacteristics~ -AUVs have better manoeuvrability and hence can provide finer spatial sampling of the seabed~ -They operate autonomously with minimal or no human intervention required and hence less demand on resource requirementsThe Acoustic Research Laboratory, Tropical Marine Science Institute, National University of Singapore has developed a digital thin line array (DTLA), which has been successfully integrated with many AUV platforms. Under the current proposal DTLA integrated with the REMUS 100 AUV at the Woods Hole Institute of Oceanography will be employed for the seabed characterisation studies. The transmitter on board the AUV will send out acoustic pulses, which will be received on the DTLA sensors after reflection from the seabed. The data collected using this setup could be used to estimate the bottom reflection coefficient and also compliment other measurements. In addition as we operate not too far away from the shipping lane, the ships could serve as low frequency source and the proposed system can explore the possibility of inverting for seabed properties from the measured ship noise via bottom bounce. Another area that could also be explored is the possibility of using the set up for synthetic aperture sonar processing using a towed array.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- May 05, 2017
- Source ID
- N629091712055
Entities
People
- Venugopalan Pallayil
Organizations
- National University of Singapore
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy