HIGH-RESOLUTION WAVEFORM LFAA ACOUSTO-OPTIC SONAR PROCESSOR

THE WORK PROPOSED INVOLVES A NEW PROPRIETARY, HIGH THROUGHPUT,ACOUSTO-OPTIC SIGNAL PROCESSING TECHNIQUE WHICH WILL ENHANCE THE NAVY-S FUTURE WARFARE CAPABILITIES IN UNDERSES SURVEILLANCE AND ASW. WEPROPOSE TO DEVELOP AN ACOUSTO-OPTIC SONAR CORRELATOR THAT CAN EASILY PROVIDE THE EQUIVALENT OF 50 GFLOPS OF DOPPLER CHANNEL CORRELATION SEARCH PROCESSING AT LOW COST, SMALL SIZE, AND LOW POWER. THIS NEW ACOUSTO-OPTIC PROCESSOR WILL PROCESS ABOUT 3 TIMES MORE DATA THAN CURRENT ACOUSTO-OPTIC PROCESSORS, AND READILY OUTPERFORM ANY PROJECTED DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSORS FOR THE NEAR FUTURE BY PERHAPS TWO ORDERS OFMAGNITUDE. THE AVAILABILITY OF SUCH A SIGNAL PROCESSOR WILL MAKE IT FEASIBLE TO USE WAVE-FORMS WITH SIMULTANEOUS RANGE AND DOPPLER HIGH RESOLUTION CHARACTERISTICS FOR ACTIVE LONG RANGE LOW FREQUENCY SONAR,AND PROVIDE IMPROVEMENTS IN ASW TARGET DETECTION, LOCALIZATION, AND TRACKING. IN PHASE I WE PROPOSE TO DEMONSTRATE FEASIBILITY AND DESIRABILITY BY 1) DEVEL6PING A PRELIMINARY DESIGN OF THE ACOUSTO-OPTIC CORRELATOR SYSBM, AND 2) ASSESSING THE ASW SYSBM IMPROVEMENT S ATTAINABLE. IN PHASE II WE WOULD FOCUS ON BUILDING HARDWARE AND DEVELOPING A PROOF-OF-PRINCIPLE TESTBED INCORPORATING THE NEW ACOUSTO-OPTIC SIGNAL PROCESSOR.