SBIR-STTR Award

The current situation in Iraq is making it extremely clear that the urban environment is a chaotic and dangerous battlespace. Currently available technology cannot provide the level of real-time situational awareness needed by each individual soldier. DARPA has determined that Sparse Conformal Acoustic Network (SCAN) technology, or soldier-worn acoustic-array "vests," is a potential solution to this problem. AETC proposes to utilize its expertise in this area to demonstrate the utility, practicality, and affordability of the SCAN concept. The proposed work focuses on the development of a low-cost, high-gain acoustic array and associated algorithms that will improve the ability to hear and recognize distant sounds by an order-of-magnitude. This will be an important advance over today's state-of-the-art that is limited to small microphone arrays of only a few sensors, and processing designed for sound-quality enhancement and automatic speech recognition. Our approach emphasizes experimental measurements of the critical unknowns effecting design and performance of SCAN, and on actual demonstration of limited capability, low-cost prototypes. The final product will be a preliminary system design and experimental demonstration of feasibility and performance.

The current situation in Iraq is making it extremely clear that the urban environment is a chaotic and dangerous battle space. Currently available technology cannot provide the level of real-time situational awareness needed by each individual soldier. DARPA has determined that Sparse Conformal Acoustic Network (SCAN) technology, or soldier-worn acoustic-array “vests,” is a potential solution to this problem. The primary goal of this SBIR is to develop and transition a sparse conformal acoustic network system (SCAN) to the US Army, a capability that will provide a revolutionary improvement in hearing for more complete situational awareness in urban operations. Phase I showed that gains of 20-40 dB over the unaided ear are feasible. The goal of this Phase II is to develop a limited-capability prototype SCAN system and demonstrate its capabilities in typical urban environments, which will set the stage for final system development and transition of SCAN in Phase III. This prototype will include sensor-nodes with unique high-gain arrays and special purpose digital boards for real-time, broadband, sparse, conformal array beamforming; user-nodes for special human computer interfacing for enhanced hearing; and the networking of these nodes to exploit the synergy of multiple arrays and users. URBAN WARFARE, MICROPHONE ARRAYS, BROADBAND ARRAYS, SPARSE ARRAYS, CONFORMAL ARRAYS, ULTRASOUND, AIR-ACOUSTICS, ATR