Advances in Aquatic Target Localization with Passive Sonar

Abstract

New underwater passive sonar techniques are developed for enhancing target localization capabilities in shallow ocean environments. The ocean surface and the seabed act as acoustic mirrors that reflect sound created by boats or subsurface vehicles, which gives rise to echoes that can be heard by hydrophone receivers (underwater microphones). The goal of this work is to leverage this "multipath" phenomenon in new ways to determine the origin of the sound, and thus the location of the target. However, this is difficult for propeller driven vehicles because the noise they produce is both random and continuous in time, which complicates its measurement and analysis. Further, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) pose additional challenges because very little is known about the sound they generate, and its similarity to that of boats. Existing methods for localizing propeller noise using multiple hy- iii