TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Sensors, Electronics, Battlespace

ACQUISITION PROGRAM: Strategic Systems Programs

OBJECTIVE: Develop an instrumentation system that collects and exploits data captured in broad ocean areas to generate aberration-corrected three-dimensional image time sequences of multiple, near-simultaneous surface impact events.

DESCRIPTION: Strategic Systems Programs (SSP) has successfully fielded portable scoring systems for the time-difference-of-arrival geolocation of Trident II D5 weapon system munitions deployed for testing in broad ocean areas. In addition, new real-time acoustic scoring systems have been field tested to support the evaluation of precision guided munitions, using similar scoring techniques, but for single impacts. Development of new Trident II D5 weapon system capabilities with multiple, near simultaneous impacts significantly complicates the processing problem presented by many different acoustic paths and therefore requires a different approach or a significant advancement of sensor and processing technologies to support weapon system evaluation in broad ocean areas.

The system developed should support potential open ocean target areas of at least 500 meters radius, with sub-meter event resolution near the center of the target area, and should be capable of resolving near-simultaneous (<1 second) of up to 500 distributed impacts per test. Standoff distances could be expected to be 10 nautical miles or more. Absolute accuracy of the capability should be better than one meter (1 sigma) referenced to the WGS-84 reference ellipsoid.

With 500 or more submunition impacts occurring in less than one second over an area of 500 meter radius, the complexity of detecting each impact and localizing it increases the problem exponentially. Separating and tagging each impact and localizing each to within one meter cannot be achieved with existing technology; therefore requiring a new, innovative approach. R&D is needed to extend multiple capabilities (detection, separation and accurate localization) in this area.

Should the data collection system require an array of sensors, they should be expendable and the total cost for all sensors per system must be less than $25K. Sensors should be deployable by unmanned or manned aircraft in quantity.

PHASE I: Identify required technologies, and develop a preliminary design for the capability. Develop a detailed description of any algorithms. Perform an initial performance and unit cost estimate.

PHASE II: Develop a fieldable prototype instrumentation system. The fieldable prototype should be capable of demonstrating all core technologies and supporting evaluation of performance estimates developed in Phase I. Demonstrate the performance of the system in a controlled body of water, including the collection of data and post-processing of those data. Evaluate the prototype instrumentation system and identify any remaining key performance parameters that have yet to be achieved.

PHASE III: Work with existing SSP support contractors to support validation testing of the instrumentation system in an actual weapon test environment. Any expendables used in the system should be produced in sufficient quantity to support testing and fielded with support equipment required for data collection and post-processing.

PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL: The ability to accurately localize multiple object impacts on the surface of a body of water can serve a number of environmental and oceanographic research activities, provide precise localization of underwater objects for underwater search and rescue, and support ship and harbor security applications. Additionally, the signal processing aspects can be applied to other types of sensor nets such as ground-based seismic sensing, remote, automated weather stations and sea life monitoring.

REFERENCES:
1. Cardoza, M., Kayser, J., Wade, W., ''Offshore Scoring of Precision Guided Munitions Using a Tactical Acoustic Realtime Geolocation System'', Inside GNSS, April 2006.

2. Cardoza, M., Kayser, J., Wade, W., et. al., ''Weapon Scoring Results from a GPS Acoustic Weapon Test and Training System'', Institute of Navigation National Technical Meeting, San Diego, California, January 24-26 2005.

3. Cardoza, M., Kayser, J., Wade, W., et. al., ''Offshore Weapon Scoring Using Rapidly Deployed Realtime Acoustic Sensors'', NDIA 21st Annual National Test and Evaluation Forum, Charlotte, NC, March 7-10 2005.

4. Saunders, J. and Cardoza, M., ''Preliminary Results from a GPS-Based Portable Impact Location System'', Proceedings of the Institute of Navigation's Satellite Division Meeting, ION GPS-95, Palm Springs, California, 12-15 September 1995.

5. Sharples, S.D., Clark, M., Collison, I.J., and Somekh, M.G., "Adaptive acoustic imaging using aberration correction in difficult materials", BINDT Insight, 47(2), pp 78 - 80, Feb 2005.

6. Lloyd-Hart, M., Baranec, C., Milton, N.M., Snyder, M., Stalcup, T., and Angel, J.R.P., "Experimental results of ground-layer and tomographic wavefront reconstruction from multiple laser guide stars", Optics Express, 14(17), Aug 2006.

KEYWORDS: sensor; miniature; acoustic; adaptive acoustic imaging; GPS; signal processing

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