Autonomous Noise Mitigation for Underwater Acoustic Networks

Ocean monitoring is receiving increased interest for environmental, scientific, commercial and militaryapplications. It is particularly important to monitor seaports, estuaries and in-land bodies of water because ofthe high level of activity in these areas. To monitor the ocean, remote sensor nodes are being deployed forextended periods of time and are often meant to detect specific signatures, such as marine mammals, ships andplatforms, or even communication signals. To extend the monitoring range, a network of sensor nodes thatshare information is deployed. The problem is that underwater acoustic sensors incur highly variable noiseconditions, due to changes in the environmental conditions. The reliability of detection at each node is thwartedwhen the noise power overwhelms the signal of interest.In this work, the objective is to develop an autonomous underwater system that monitors and analyzes ambientnoise and that autonomously re-configures its settings to the varying noise conditions. To achieve this, a sensorwill be developed to monitor the underwater noise and to characterize its properties. Different noise mitigationtechniques will be studied to maintain the operation of the network. To develop the noise mitigationalgorithms, the underwater propagation environment will be modeled using simulation tools. Further,promising algorithms will be implemented on hardware prototypes, and tested in realistic underwaterconditions.