Compact Dipping Sonar for Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs)

This proposed effort evaluates the specific requirements for a USV mounted dipping sonar system and develops a design for a dipping sonar system to satisfy those requirements. The Navy has investigated the installation of unmodified helicopter dipping sonars onto USV platforms but found the resulting size and weight impact to the USV to be prohibitive. The proposed design modifies the existing MH-60R AQS-22 dipping sonar system to tailor it to the specific USV application. The proposed design significantly decreases physical size and weight, provides equivalent sonar performance, and provides a low total ownership cost. In addition to developing an improved dipping sonar system design, the proposed effort also addresses the overall processing architecture required to move processed sonar sensor data from the remote USV back to the sonar operator on the LCS platform.