2023_programme: Low-frequency passive acoustic surveillance with directional sensors

Back


  • Session: 17. Unmanned vehicles for underwater acoustic surveillance and monitoring
    Organiser(s): Alain Maguer
  • Lecture: Low-frequency passive acoustic surveillance with directional sensors [invited]
    Paper ID: 1927
    Author(s): stinco pietro, tesei alessandra, been robert, maguer alain
    Presenter: Tesei Alessandra
    Abstract: Underwater monitoring has an important role in many civilian and defence applications, ranging from stopping\nsmugglers and illegal immigration to anti-submarine warfare and protection of high value assets.\nUnderwater monitoring is typically performed with passive acoustics using large antenna of hydrophones that cannot\nbe towed by small autonomous vehicles. However, recent advances in sensor technology allowed the use of acoustic\nvector sensors that can be installed even on small unmanned vehicles or small bottom sensor stations.\nThis opens the possibility to perform long-term monitoring of a sea area using networks of mobile, smart and long-\nendurance platforms and allowing portability, flexibility and re-configurability of the network.\nIn the last four years, the Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) has been developing a\nheterogeneous, robotic autonomous network dedicated to passive underwater surveillance, in particular to the\ndetection, localization and tracking of noise sources of interest.\nBy the term “heterogeneous” we mean that smart nodes of different typology are networked, with mobile nodes\ncooperating with fixed assets. Fixed nodes can guarantee monitoring for extended periods, but at pre-planned locations.\nThe mobile robots, on the other hand, can exploit their movement capabilities to dynamically improve the sensor\ndistribution geometry and, hence, the mission performance.\nThe present activity extends the previous work by integrating in a Slocum glider, for the first time at CMRE, an acoustic vector sensor, namely the 3D GeoSpectrum M20-040. This sensor is able to provide directionality in the band from few Hz to 3 kHz, despite its limited size. The glider has been equipped also with an acoustic modem, able to communicate with a USBL deployed from a mother ship or a gateway. Through the USBL, a Control Station can get R/T measurements of the glider position and receive its detection alarms during underwater missions, without need of surfacing.\nExtensive at-sea tests of navigation, underwater communications and real-time, on-board signal processing were conducted during engineering and scientific trials with one of CMRE gliders hosting an M20-040 and an acoustic modem.\nThe paper will provide a detailed analysis of the system and of the processing chain, along with at-sea results.
      Download the full paper
  • Corresponding author: Dr Alesssandra Tesei
    Affiliation: NATO STO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE)
    Country: Italy
    e-mail:

Back