The Navy currently uses air deployed underwater Sound Underwater Source (SUS) charges to aid in gathering oceanographic data. While explosive sources offer a number of advantages, they also have a number of key limitations including: the lack of repetitive capability from a single container, safety concerns and associated costs, and complex broadband signal. An electrical discharge based acoustic source has many of the advantages of an explosive source with the elimination of a number of the disadvantages. The proposed Underwater Pulsed Acoustic Source (UPAS) removes the remaining disadvantages of explosive sources and gives the Navy true high intensity impulse capability. The proposed technology will provide low frequency, broadband, impulses with precise timing, multiple ping capability, and coded output. Since each outgoing pulse can be coded, echo returns can be discriminated in high clutter environments. We propose to investigate the use of a multi stage wavelet processor to take advantage of these wideband pulses in a high clutter environment.
Keywords: Surface Discharge Underw Impulse Spark Sonar
