2019_programme: PASSIVE ACOUSTIC MONITORING USING A TOWED ARRAY FROM A WAVE-PROPELLED USV

• Session: 16. Advances in acoustic measurement systems: Technologies and applications
  Organiser(s): Tesei Alessandra
• Lecture: PASSIVE ACOUSTIC MONITORING USING A TOWED ARRAY FROM A WAVE-PROPELLED USV
  Paper ID: 831
  Author(s): Anthony Treloar Alfie, Hunter Alan, Bujalka Jan, Johnston Phil
  Presenter: Anthony Treloar Alfie
  Presentation type: oral
  Abstract: The use of towed hydrophone arrays deployed from wave-propelled autonomous surface vehicles presents a unique opportunity for long-duration, wide-area passive acoustic underwater surveillance. Example applications include marine mammal monitoring for environmental surveys and mitigation zone enforcement, as well as port and harbour security. However, the intermittent nature of propulsion inherent to these platforms exacerbates the problem of uncertainty in the array profile, which can cause inaccurate bearing estimates, misdetections, and false alarms in beamforming estimates. Data from simulation and from the Unmanned Warrior ’16 trial has been used to understand and quantify the array motion, and investigate potential techniques for improvement. Our method generates a probabilistic distribution of potential array shapes by means of a particle filter and then refines these by maximising the beamformer response. Following validation with simulated data, the method was applied to the experimental data and suggested that the array was curved and inclined by approximately -35° in this case.
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• Corresponding author: Mr Anthony Treloar Alfie
  Affiliation: University of Bath
  Country: United Kingdom
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