Development of Analysis Techniques for Predicting Magnetic Anomaly Detection (MAD) Equipped UAV Performance in Naval Anti-Submarine Warfare Environmen

The Navy is currently integrating new highly sensitive magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) sensors on small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for maritime surveillance. White River Technologies, Inc. (WRT) propose the development of a MAD tactical decision aid (TDA) software simulation environment that contains explicit probabilistic modeling of target and background magnetic field signals, systematic consideration of multiple complex environmental and mission-related factors that affect signals, and computation of statistical metrics characterizing MAD sensor performance. The simulation tool will accurately consider a wide array of sensor, environmental, flight system, and mission-level parameters. The team will utilize extensive experience in airborne magnetometry, UAV magnetic noise estimation, and probabilistic MAD simulation to develop and demonstrate the software environment. At the heart of the service oriented software architecture are modeling and simulation modules that accurately account for the errors associated with numerous inputs in order to output useful predictive metrics of probabilistic success. This tool may be used pre-flight for predictive analysis and system-level parameter delineation, for training operators, or for optimizing a variety of UAV-based geophysical sensing mission configurations. Extensions to salvage, search and rescue, buried hazards, and infrastructure characterization may be readily accomplished via the modular coding and user interface design.