SBIR-STTR Award

Navy combat systems employ many underwater acoustic sensors to detect submerged threats. The performance of these sensors must be maintained at high levels for the combat system to perform effectively. These sensors are exposed to harsh environments and operating conditions that, over time, compromise sensor health resulting in degraded detection performance. Additionally, excessive radiated noise emitted from the platform may limit the performance of these sensors contributing to degraded sensor and system detection performance. Although the Navy currently monitors and presents operators sensor health and self-noise for many of its acoustic sensors; these data are not provided to the combat system for use in calculating sensor performance for threat detection or in maintaining an optimized system configuration. The U.S. Navy needs an automated acoustic monitoring system to alert operators to degraded sensor performance due to platform self-noise and sensor health, and making these data available to the combat system for use in calculating detection performance. HighRez Consultings expertise in the areas of beamforming, sensor self-noise monitoring, sensor metrics, performance prediction and system engineering within the AN/SQQ-89A(V)15 and AN/BQQ-10(V)A-RCI programs provides invaluable knowledge in strategies for successfully developing, testing, integrating, transitioning, and deploying the innovative technologies developed in this research.

Benefit:
The primary anticipated benefits of this technology are to the Navy in the AxB (ACB, ASB, APB) programs. These programs will benefit through the improvements in PMFL/self-noise monitoring and determining sensor health, establishing the severity of the degradation on combat system detection performance, and providing the operator the ability issue a CASREP or reconfigure to maximize sensor and combat system performance. An additional Navy program that may benefit is the LCS program. As PMS420 and IWS5a attempt to retrofit the LCS with the ASW Mission Package Escort Mission Module (EMM) based of the AN/SQQ-89 ACB software and the Multi-Function Towed Array (MFTA) and Variable Depth Sonar (VDS) arrays, this technology will be invaluable. Because LCS was not originally designed for organic ASW sensors, its minimal self-quieting features make the EMM potentially susceptible to system detection performance issues due to interference from platform noise. This technology will allow the operator to monitor array noise due varying LCS platform noise and reconfigure the combat system to use in-situ degraded beampatterns. Additional national security applications of this technology could include U.S Coast Guard activities in monitoring and maintaining their sonar systems on the new Legend-class cutters as well as the Homeland defense department in applying some of components to monitor, maintain, and enhance sensor health in swimmer detection and tracking sonars for port acoustic security systems. Commercial applications could include oil and gas companies that use side-scan sonars in checking the status of pipelines and cables on the seafloor, as well as bathymetric soundings and mapping to maintain and enhance the precision of their sonar-based tools.

Keywords:
alertment, alertment, acoustic sensor self-noise monitoring, Performance prediction, PMFL