Advanced Beamforming Techniques for Tracking of Fast Underwater Objects

The proposal addresses the problem of adaptive beamforming for passive and active sonar systems. Inparticular, the project focuses on the tracking of mobile objects underwater in presence of multiple noisesources. Acoustic signals received by a multiple hydrophone array will be used to suppress noise sources andamplify the signal in the direction of interest. The signal processing algorithms adapt to variations of the noisefiled and geometry of the underwater signal propagation environment. The proposed solution involvesimplementation of efficient minimum variance distortion-less type beamformers in combination withunderwater channel sensing approaches.Design of powerful and precise sonar systems will benefit a large variety of underwater applications andcontribute to the fast growing field of underwater acoustics signalling. The later is of particular importance forNova Scotia industry and economy, represented by Akoostix in this project. A large variety of applicationsinclude tracking of ships and underwater vehicles, marine mammals, and fish, survey and imaging of thesea-bed, and surveillance of underwater power turbines and many others.