In the war on terror, advanced warnings on unidentified small vessels heading towards the US shores is vital. Such vessels have to be detected while they are still in the open oceans and the situation needs to be assessed in a timely manner before the boats can blend in with coastal traffic. Towards that, Harris Acoustic Products Corporation is proposing a simple and automated deepwater buoy-based small vessel detection system. To be cost effective, such a system should be able to operate unattended for a long period of time and avoid a single point of failure. The proposed passive acoustic detection system will meet such requirements by consuming very low power and will be able to operate either in a stand alone mode or as a node of a distributed system. To provide redundancy, relevant information will be communicated both by satellite and networked radio modems. During Phase-I, basic configuration of such a system will be established along with best methods to detect small vessels in an automated manner. Detailed design and analysis of field data will be carried out in Phase-II. Based on the analysis and experimentation, a prototype will be developed and deployed in Phase-III.
