Cortical Location and Elimination of Acoustic Noise (CLEAN)

Coordinated Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) tactical operations frequently hinge upon the ability of our airborne assets to detect, classify, localize and prosecute enemy submarines who possess formidable offensive and defensive capabilities. This is becoming increasingly difficult as enemy assets get quieter and the acoustic environment becomes increasingly crowded. The Navy’s airborne ASW passive and active sensor systems must contend with friendly sonar system interference, non-cooperative in-band signal interferers, commercial active sonar signals, environmental noise, and biologics which all contribute to unacceptable performance losses. In-Depth Engineering Corporation proposes the Cortical Location and Elimination of Acoustic Noise (CLEAN) solution – an innovative, software-only acoustic noise removal algorithm based on a model of the early stages of sound analysis that occurs in the primary auditory cortex of the brain of a mammal. The CLEAN solution was demonstrated in Phase I to isolate and remove sources of noise consisting of surface ship signatures and improve the performance of matched filter SONAR processing. The CLEAN algorithm mimics the ability of mammals to tune their acoustic receptive fields in order to attend to one sound over other competing sounds.