Preserving Navigation Access for the War Fighter Development of an Acoustic Marine Life Watch System to Support Corps Channel Maintenance and Enhanc

This effort is focused on establishing U.S. Army Corps leadership in preserving navigation access for the war fighter through the development and implementation of an acoustic-based sensor system to detect, track, and classify large aquatic animals. The proposed high frequency imaging active sonar system is configurable to detect, track, classify, and alert to the presence of threatened and endangered marine animals and marine mammals, including, manatees, sea turtles, sturgeon, and dolphins, at a user specified range spanning over a hundred meters. A systematic study of the effects of complex underwater acoustic environments, as well as those of the target characteristics, on the performance of the proposed multibeam imaging sonar system was conducted in the real-world environment and numerically. Metrics such as detection range, resolution, water-column coverage, reverberation level, signal excess, and ease of deployment were used to evaluate the systems performance. Acoustic signatures of targets of interest and of targets of non-interest were analyzed and some detection and classification features were identified in order to provide insight necessary for the Phase II development of active sonar detection, classification, and tracking algorithms capable of delivering the performance as specified by the detection rate, false alarm rejection rate, and classification accuracy requirements.