Acoustic Data Software “Intelligent Agent” Search Tool

Today’s sonar operators are presented with a voluminous amount of acoustic contact data, spanning a multidimensional search space of arrays, bearings, frequencies, and time. Improvement in arrays, signal processing, and computer performance has led to the ability to detect even more contacts. When combined with high contact density in littoral operating regions, the result can be a loss of contact detection and tracking opportunities. Even when detected, it can be difficult to annotate and log a single contact’s behavior during a watch, much less all the contacts. The opportunity exists to address this problem by combining advances in sonar system automation (e.g. trackers and bell ringers), historical on-boat recording of automation by Progeny’s Data Collection System (DDCS), and Data Mining techniques. While the sonar operator is limited to the data he’s at, sonar system automation continuously searches a larger search space with processing parameters optimized for a given array, frequency range, bell, etc. DDCS continuously records this data for up to ~40 hours. With the proper intelligent agent tools, this data can be mined to provide the sonar operator new near-real-time contact characterization, interrogation, comparison, and behavior prediction capabilities