Embedded Sensors with Low Power Telemetry for Towed Arrays

Naval operations with towed arrays have identified areas for improvements including performance, power consumption and reliability. The SeaLandAire Technologies, Inc. / L-3 Chesapeake Sciences Corporation team will address these concerns by incorporating a cost effective, high performance, small hydrophone paired with a low power, volumetrically efficient telemetry electronics. The combination of SeaLandAire / L-3 technologies will provide the Navy a path to resolve the Thin Line Towed Array issues. The technical issues and solution approaches are: Improve Performance - Increase the number of hydrophones/channels per unit length by using a smaller form factor for the sensor / telemetry package Reduce Power Consumption - Using lower power telemetry electronics developed under SBIR funding Improve Reliability Reduce the wire bending stress by routing wires closer to the array centerline and reconfiguring the hydrophone/telemetry configuration for graceful degradation in performance if wire failure were to occur This proposal discusses the aspects of the technical issues that can be mitigated, the available technology that can be applied to the issues and the relative merits of four candidate solutions.