Novel Turning Control Devices Via Smart Materials Technology

Active sonar systems face a significant declutteringproblem especially when operating in shallow water. In futuremulti-static, multi-receiver search missions, the number of alertsis expected to increase dramatically. Tactical scenarios presenta further complication because response time is critical and, as aresult, classification in the fewest number of pings is cruciallyimportant. Historically, the decluttering issue has beenaddressed by estimating parameters of active acoustic returns andcomparing those returns against thresholds. Unfortunately, thesethresholds are highly sensitive to the environment. The proposed Phase II research intends to developenvironmentally robust signal processing algorithms thatsignificantly reduce clutter, improve detection, and performquickly. To address these issues, the Phase II effort proposes tofurther develop and evaluate several techniques initiated underthe Phase I SBIR. This includes a CFAR threshold based on the(possibly) non-Gaussian statistics of the matched filter or energydetector output. The second is to develop a classification metricbased on acoustic return similarity for distinguishing targetsfrom clutter. The other techniques include spatial clutterreduction and decision fusion algorithms. The algorithms will betested using real sea data, and transitioned to real timeprototypes.