The proposed phase i effort consists of analysis and evaluation of techniques for measurement of acoustic sensor positions in long towedarrays for use in reducing performance degradations due to array motions and distortion. present and future array designs and operating environments will be… More

The goal of the Middle Game Localization Utilizing Air DeployableActive Receiver (ADAR) project is the development of the passivecapabilities of the ADAR buoy. The Phase I of the researchinvolved a thorough investigation of the potential for gains dueto enhanced ADAR passive processing through a… More

The objectives of this research are to research and design the necessary components of an environmental impact assessment software suite and to provide modeled environmental impact assessment results for selected sites. The research will focus on theimpact of active acoustic emissions on marine… More

"The next generation USW combat system will implement improvedactive/passive sonar processing in a COTS architecture. Shipboardsensors include radar, hull array, towed array, and sonobuoys.The sonar analyst must efficiently manage a huge increase ininformation to realize the full potential of future… More

"The objective of this proposed research is to define a USW tactical data fusion architecture and develop a fusion algorithm baseline that can continue to mature through an incremental technology and software build process. Phase 1 program emphasis will beplaced on data fusion algorithm assessments… More

"The next generation USW combat system will implement improvedactive/passive sonar processing in a COTS architecture. Shipboardsensors include radar, hull array, towed array, and sonobuoys.The sonar analyst must efficiently manage a huge increase ininformation to realize the full potential of future… More

"The objective of this research is to research alternatives of a total planning system solution for use of environmental sensor data for the tactical ASW warfighter. The software will plan an integrated deployment strategy for both environmental andtactical sensors prior to takeoff. It will run… More

"The objective of this research is to produce an environmental sensor simulation system (ESSS) that will support advanced research and development for ASW. Efforts are underway to design new environmental sensors that will enable accurate, timelymeasurement of the ocean environment, especially for… More

The objectives of this research are to fully design and develop a prototype of an environmental impact assessment and mitigation software suite, focusing on the impact of active acoustic emissions on marine mammals. This software will be: web-enabled,cross-platform capable, and be applicable… More

Even when built to exacting standards, towed arrays invariably suffer acoustic sensor failures. A relatively small number of sensors can have large negative impact on beamformer side-lobe levels. This SBIR program will develop, implement, and integrate atowed array beamformer shading algorithm that… More

The objective of this research is to develop alternatives for a total planning system solution for use of environmental sensor data for the tactical ASW warfighter. This software will be used for pre-flight planning to evaluate alternatives and develop effective tactical search plans based on… More

The objectives of this research are to design and develop a software prototype of a realistic ocean simulation system primarily to support development of environmental sensors through more precise evaluation of sensor design alternatives. This simulation system, the Environmental Sensor Simulation… More

In Phase I Robust Towed Array Beamforming (RTAB) work, Applied Hydro-Acoustics Research, Inc. (AHA) developed and tested several candidate algorithms, including a data-adaptive "Hole-Filling" algorithm, that recover losses of acoustic performance resulting from acoustic channels failures. With… More

Reducing reverberation noise, and increasing resolution drive the ability to detect, and classify underwater mines in a shallow littoral environment. This proposal addresses the problem with an analysis of reverberation noise from recorded sea tests, adaptive beamforming (ABF), and adaptive… More

The survivability of Navy tactical surface ships operating in forward shallow water littoral environments largely depends upon the effectiveness of hull-mounted active sonar to detect, classify and localize threat sea mines. Employment of active sonar for mine avoidance in shallow water… More

The Program Executive Office of the Littoral and Mine Warfare Systems (PMS 485) operates SURTASS TwinLine acoustic surveillance arrays in the Western Pacific where they encounter areas of intense fishing activity. The TwinLine array system consists of two acoustic streamers that are towed by a heavy… More

The DD(X) program seeks to use off-board sensors as adjuncts to a robust own-ship capability. Optimal use of these off-board sensors requires tools for providing environmentally adaptive tools to perform optimal placement and processing of these multi-static sensors. The team of Applied… More

Use of multi-static active sonar fields provides necessary and complementary coverage to on-board organic sensors of surface combatants. Effective field management and performance requires an effective means for planning the collection of, managing, gathering, detecting, classifying, localizing,… More

The IUSS operators detect, localize, classify and report contacts of interest based on displays of acoustic data from one or more arrays of hydrophones. Currently, operators search through large amounts of information presented on acoustic displays. When there are a large number of arrays, the… More

The Program Executive Office of the Littoral and Mine Warfare Systems, Maritime Surveillance Systems Program Office (PMS 485) operates SURTASS T-AGOS ships with TwinLine acoustic surveillance arrays in the Western Pacific where they encounter areas of intense fishing activity. The TwinLine array… More

Multi-sensor data fusion is a critical technology used to support contact tracking and association for many Navy missions and systems. Traditional approaches focus on fusing contact position and kinematics data from multiple heterogeneous sensors, with overlapping coverage areas, in order to… More

According to The Navy's Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (UUV) Master Plan updated in 2004, UUV's will perform important, force multiplying missions such as intelligence, surveillance, mine countermeasures, tactical oceanography, navigation and anti-submarine warfare. The missions they perform will be… More

This SBIR topic for USW Intelligent Controller addresses innovative technology to help the sonar watch team to optimally employ USW assets for search and detection, classification, and tracking of surface and sub-surface platforms. Adaptive Methods and Metron have formed a team for this project -… More

Damage sustained on board a US Naval vessel is a serious situation. Rapid situational assessment of a damaged compartment by a rugged, hand-deployed, situational sensor would be advantageous in coordinating a response, mitigating additional damage to the ship and crew, and preserving the ship's… More

Environmental adaptation is critical to the success of vital ASW missions. Environmental adaptation is particularly important for confident and effective multi-static active ASW in challenging littoral waters characterized by a high degree of uncertainty and variability. Acoustic sources are… More

Marine mammals are often found in areas where US Navy ASW test operations are carried out. Several events have raised levels of concern that sonar emission could be causing deleterious impacts on marine mammals. For instance, in March of 2000, a mass stranding of beaked whales [NOAA report Dec 20,… More

UUVs will perform important, force multiplying missions such as intelligence, surveillance, mine countermeasures, tactical oceanography, navigation and anti-submarine warfare. The missions they perform will be autonomous, low risk, and have low observability which will reduce risk to our forces. It… More

This Phase 2 project will develop and integrate intelligent controller technology into the Navy's Undersea Warfare-Decision Support System (USW-DSS). Technologies to be developed include (1) XMAP cross-platform sensor data fusion, (2) XMAP contact state estimation, and (3) common tactical picture… More

When submerged, unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) have difficulty with navigation and communication: inertial navigation systems can be used but they are subject to drift the longer the unit remains below; communications are limited to low bandwidth acoustics or wiring back to another vessel or… More

As the Navy moves forward with plans to augment the conventional assets with unmanned sensor vehicles, standoff weapons, and intelligent command and control (C2) systems we find more data will be available from these remote assets that is needed to maintain an accurate, complete, and consistent… More

Damage sustained on board a US Naval vessel is a serious situation. Rapid situational assessment of a damaged compartment by a rugged, hand-deployed, situational sensor would be advantageous in coordinating a response, mitigating additional damage to the ship and crew, and preserving the ship's… More

The US Navy seeks the development of a miniature transponder locator unit, capable of sustaining high shock loads that can be placed in both lightweight and heavyweight exercise torpedoes for rapid torpedo recovery. Currently, a considerable amount of time and resources is expended to visually… More

Over the last decade developments in ASW sensor systems has greatly increased the number and quality of the sensor systems deployed thus increasing the volume of data to be assessed by orders of magnitude. Data fusion concepts have been employed to help reduce the operator workload and provide… More

This proposal recognizes the complexity of the concept of Situational Awareness (SA) in the context of information-based warfare paradigms. The principal objective of the Phase I effort is to establish the reliability of an innovated "Boolean" approach to establishing SA scoring. Our approach… More

The current ASW route planning and asset allocation algorithms suffer from several major shortcomings. First, the current capability provides solutions that are often counterintuitive and have little tactical utility. Second, the operator has virtually no insight or control over the solutions.… More

Uniformly spaced line arrays (ULAs) exhibit spatial ambiguities governed by to the Nyquist sampling theorem. This results in grating-lobes which degrade array gain and also results in direction of arrival estimation ambiguities for signals of interest. The challenge associated with the formation of… More

The technology developed under this Phase II SBIR provides an automated collaborative data exchange capability to realize significant reduction in the time it takes for an operator to promote a contact, which requires high confidence contact validation. In particular, this technology will focus on… More

The Anti Submarine Warfare Commander (ASWC) needs an accurate operational picture and timely answers to critical questions in order to take effective action. They operate under severe time pressure, performing complex multi-component decision tasks, and in rapidly evolving and changing information… More

Over the last decade developments in ASW sensor systems has greatly increased the number and quality of the sensor systems deployed thus increasing the volume of data to be assessed by orders of magnitude. Sonobuoys as acoustic sensors provide the unique quality of being an in-situ sensor in remote… More

Fishing gear continues to become entangled in underwater towed array surveillance equipment causing a variety of damage to the arrays and towing equipment. Adaptive Methods proposes two solutions which should significantly reduce this damage, fishing gear deflection and fishing gear penetration… More

AN/SQQ-89 surface combatant active processing does not currently leverage echoes from off-board sources, such as other combatants in the strike group or transmissions from other systems. Leveraging active emissions bi-statically can improve Q-89 ASW capabilities in high-interest scenarios.… More

Current tactical display applications, while adequately providing operator tools needed to assess the data and gain an awareness of the tactical situation, have not achieved seamless integration of decision aides in a cohesive geographic presentation. Specifically, systems suffer from the too many… More

The Navy has a need for a high-resolution, high-gain acoustic array that will allow them to make special acoustic measurements of full and model scale submarines. Volumetric arrays such as the High Gain array used on the Hayes for NSWC-CD source localization and the Twisted Bi-Cone array developed… More

Over the last decade developments in ASW sensor systems has greatly increased the number and types of the sensor deployed thus increasing the volume of data by orders of magnitude that is required to be simulated by a trainer system. Traditional training systems suffer severe scaling limitations, as… More

The Surface Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) community has been focused on improving active processing in recent years. The introduction of the Multi-Function Towed Array (MFTA) provides the fleet with an advanced passive and active receive system. This bi-static system has many advantages to the… More

This proposal recognizes the intricacies of maintaining an accurate, complete, and consistent Common Tactical Picture (CTP) across a strike group at the multiple layers of the ASW command structure. As the Navy moves towards more capable sensor systems and netted sensors on conventional and unmanned… More

This proposal acknowledges the difficulties of developing an accurate, actionable representation of the battlespace in a Common Tactical Picture. As the Navy matures and expands cross platform network communications, the amount of data shared by multiple platforms in a strike group will continue to… More

This proposal acknowledges the challenges with developing Carrier Strike Group (CGS) This proposal acknowledges the challenges with developing Carrier Strike Group (CGS) Undersea Warfare mission plans and maintaining shared situational awareness. As CSG ASW sensor and sensor processing systems have… More

The US Navy seeks the development of a miniature transponder locator unit, capable of sustaining high shock loads that can be placed in both lightweight and heavyweight exercise torpedoes for rapid torpedo recovery. Currently, a considerable amount of time and resources is expended to visually… More

This proposal recognizes the complexity of Situational Awareness (SA) in the context of information base warfare paradigms. The principal objective of the Phase II effort is to prototype an innovated"binary"approach to establish SA scoring. Our approach breaks down complex problems into… More

The US Navy currently spends millions of dollars per year on consumable tapes to store acoustic sensor and track data during exercises and missions. These tapes are cumbersome and have a limited life in terms of read/write cycles. Tapes are typically recorded to only once. Tape drives are bulky and… More

Our Context-Aware Multiple Objective Planning (CMOP) is focused on the expansion and refinement of the mission planning capability in order to more fully support the capabilities required by Under Sea Warfare Decision Support System (USW-DSS). This includes expanding the spatial-temporal and… More

Adaptive Methods and Applied Research Laboratory at Penn State are developing a hierarchical inference approach for multi-modal unattended ground sensor (UGS) networks. that will enable significant performance gains via integrated machine learning techniques, to include In situ performance… More

This SBIR project provides the opportunity to address the challenges associated with protecting the carrier or other high value units from the submarine threat with the addition of a real-time decision aid for multi-sensor threat assessment. Adaptive Methods proposes a sailor-centric approach for… More

Submarines have a need for situational awareness at all times. They are equipped with Fat Line acoustic arrays such as the T-16 and the TB-34 in order to provide this awareness. However, at low tow speeds the array droops from front to back and also loses straightness. This spatial distortion… More

AN/SQQ-89 surface combatant mid-frequency active (MFA) processing will benefit significantly through an open-architecture approach (OA) to system implementation, allowing proposed and future advanced technologies to be introduced through a built-test-build and Advanced Processor Build (ABP) process.… More

Current and future ASW systems need a strategy to effectively share data among network users. Net-centric systems require exact data formats and vocabularies to create accurate knowledge without human intervention. Significant efforts have been expended developing the Anti-Submarine Warfare… More