Novel Acoustic System for Intelligible Long-Range Hailing

Long range acoustic hailing and warning systems succeed at interrogating intent at safe standoff distances, at communicating instructions, commands, and warnings at long range, and as nonlethal deterrents and suppressors to aggressors. The current generation of acoustic hailing devices has been in military use for close to two decades. Despite its success, there remains considerable room for improvement in low frequency performance, speech intelligibility at range, overall size and weight, and the amount of user intervention necessary to operate the device. Creare proposes to develop the Enhanced Long Range Acoustic Hailer (ELRAH) to fill these operational gaps. State-of-the-art drivers boost output levels. Novel array and horn designs improve low-frequency sound projection. Modern engineering materials reduce overall system weight. Speech processing improves downrange speech intelligibility. Optical systems automatically steer the sound beam toward the downrange target. Integrated environmental sensors correct for local acoustic propagation characteristics. In Phase I we will design key ELRAH subsystems and estimate overall ELRAH performance. In Phase I Option we will evaluate key subsystem performance and design Phase II test plans. In Phase II we will build and evaluate a fully functional ELRAH prototype.