Forward Looking Collision Avoidance and Sub-Bottom Sensor for Conceptual High Speed Submersibles

"To meet the submarine threat in the littoral, high-speed submersibles will require additional information from target electric (E) fields to improve Detection Probability, reduce False Alarm Rate, and provide tracking information, in a turbulent regimewhere acoustic sensors encounter difficulty. Recent advances in processing E-field signatures of submarines will help mitigate active silencing measures and provide the potential to track and avoid them. New electrode designs and low-noise amplifierscan be configured into candidate E-field sensors for evaluation on high-speed submersibles.During Phase I, threat submarine E-field signatures will be investigated and background noise, as seen from high-speed submersibles, will be modeled to provide signal-to-noise ratios for candidate sensor performance estimates. The effects of turbulence onE-field signature detection during high-speed operations will be approximated. Current Fourier processing techniques will be compared with the new Hilbert-Huang Transform and Empirical Mode Decomposition methods. E-field sensors will be designed that arecompatible with high-speed submersible configurations and their primary sensor concepts. During Phase II, an E-field sensor, based on designs from Phase I, will be fabricated and sea-tested at speed against a calibrated submarine target. During PhaseIII, development and integration of the sensor into high-speed submersible designs will take plac