SBIR-STTR Award

The current U.S. Navy heavy-weight torpedo (HWT) is a complex autonomous system that carries out several autonomous phases after being launched from a U.S. Navy asset platform. These phases, as mentioned in the solicitation, are generally search, detect, track, classify, localize, home, and prosecute. Owing largely to the complexities of the underwater acoustic environment, the HWT must operate with an intrinsic information deficit. Such challenges make detection, localization, and classification of slow-moving (low-Doppler) contacts difficult for all unmanned systems. MIKEL has successfully employed advanced beamformers such as the Basis Pursuit De-Noising (BPDN) beamformer to provide highly-resolved localization estimates of sonar contacts. The BPDN is applied in this work to separate closely-spaced, slow-moving, contacts in the context of that found with the HWT. For the HWT and other unmanned systems, the BPDN can provide superior localization performance to improve the classification of low-Doppler contacts.

Benefit:
The proposed effort herein anticipates significant benefits to the U.S. Navy by providing improved localization, and subsequently classification, of slowly-moving, closely-spaced contacts on unmanned systems such as the Heavy Weight Torpedo (HWT). MIKEL proposes a relevant super-resolution Basis Pursuit De-Noising (BPDN) beamformer which has successfully employed on prior sonar data.

Keywords:
Basis Pursuit, Basis Pursuit, low-Doppler

A current situation that is of interest to the United States Department of the Navy (DoN) is developing novel technology that improves heavy-weight torpedo effectiveness in a variety of scenarios such as countered targets, low-Doppler targets, and shallow water environments. The proposed effort herein addresses multiple of the abovementioned areas by providing detection, classification, and localization improvements using a common mathematical framework. Phase I results showed beamforming improvements for small arrays and closely spaced sources when compared to dominant mode rejection beamformers. The technology developed under this Phase 2 efforts builds upon basis pursuit optimization which is leveraged herein for multiple subsystem improvements within the heavy-weight torpedo to improve torpedo effectiveness.

Benefit:
The proposed effort herein anticipates significant benefits to the U.S. Navy by providing detection, classification, and localization improvements for the heavy-weight torpedo. Phase I results showed beamforming improvements for small arrays and closely spaced sources when compared to dominant mode rejection beamformers. The technology developed under this Phase 2 efforts builds upon basis pursuit optimization which is leveraged herein for multiple subsystem improvements within the heavy-weight torpedo to improve torpedo effectiveness in countered scenarios.

Keywords:
low-Doppler, shallow water, countered targets