Track Parameter Estimation from Multipath Delay Information

It is desired to track the location of an underwater acoustic source with range difference measurements from a stationary passive array. Many times, the array has only one or two sensors, and the multipath and intersensor range difference measurements are insufficient to localize and track a source moving along an arbitrary path [1]. Here, we propose to track sources with one- or two-sensur stationary passive arrays by making the simplifying assumption that the source's path can be described by a small set of so-called track parameters. Range difference information can then be used to estimate the track parameter set rather than the source location as a function of time. In this paper, we choose the track parameters to specify a straight-line constant-velocity constant-depth path. Cramer-Rao bounds are presented for estimating these track parameters from the time history of multipath and intersensor range difference measurements. It is shown that this track parameter set cannot be accurately estimated from the time history of a single multipath range difference without side information (an independent velocity estimate, for instance), although multipath and intersensor range difference measurements from a two-sensor array are generally sufficient to estimate the track parameter set. Computationally efficient techniques are presented which estimate track parameters from range difference measurements taken from one- and two-sensor arrays. Monte-Carlo simulations are presented which show that these techniques have sample mean-square error approximately equal to the Cramer-Rao bound when a single multipath range difference and an independent velocity estimate are available. The sample mean-square error is shown to be in the range of two to ten times the corresponding Cramer-Rao bounds when these techniques are applied to two-sensor range difference data.     

聚类分析方法识别水下目标

水下目标的固有振动频率与其本身的材料参数密切相关。如能从测得的目标共振频率反演目标材料参数，结合某些先验知识，便可对目标的某些物理属性作出判断，实现或有助于实现水下目标识别。Ｂａｔａｒｄ等人研究了柱形目标中声速与其固有振动频率间的关系。本文分析并简化了这种关系，然后应用模态识别中的动态聚类方法，由目标共振频率反演目标材料参数，所得结果与实际材料参数符合较好。     

浅海环境水声传播数据实测与仿真分析

搭建了一套水下录音记录系统,在复杂浅海环境进行了水声数据采集实验;对于水声采集数据进行了距离、频率谱分析,利用MIT开发的声学计算程序OASES针对声场进行了仿真分析。通过模拟结果和实测结果的比较,优化调整仿真程序的环境参数,分析发现影响声场分布的主要因素为沉积层压缩波声速与声源深度。通过这种方式,优化了仿真软件的环境参数,初步建立了比较准确的浅海水声环境仿真模型,取得了预期实验效果。     

Robust source localization in shallow water based on vector optimization

Owing to the multipath effect, the source localization in shallow water has been an area of active interest. However, most methods for source localization in shallow water are sensitive to the assumed model of the underwater environment and have poor robustness against the underwater channel uncertainty, which limit their further application in practical engineering. In this paper, a new method of source localization in shallow water, based on vector optimization concept, is described, which is highly robust against environmental factors affecting the localization, such as the channel depth, the bottom reflection coefficients, and so on. Through constructing the uncertainty set of the source vector errors and extracting the multi-path sound rays from the sea surface and bottom, the proposed method can accurately localize one or more sources in shallow water dominated by multipath propagation. It turns out that the natural formulation of our approach involves minimization of two quadratic functions subject to infinitely many nonconvex quadratic constraints. It shows that this problem (originally intractable) can be reformulated in a convex form as the so-called second-order cone program (SOCP) and solved efficiently by using the well-established interior point method, such as the software tool, SeDuMi. Computer simulations show better performance of the proposed method as compared with existing algorithms and establish a theoretical foundation for the practical engineering application.     

不确定海洋环境中基于贝叶斯理论的多声源定位算法

环境参数失配导致定位性能大幅度下降是匹配场定位所面临的难题之一。应用贝叶斯理论对环境聚焦,是当前解决该难题的研究热点。环境聚焦方法的实质是将未知环境参数和声源位置联合优化估计,当出现多个目标时,估计的参数会随着声源个数成倍增加,因此不得不利用有限的观测信息来实现众多参数的估计。本文采用最大似然比方法,获得信号源谱和误差项的最大似然估计,实现这些敏感性较弱参数的间接反演,有效降低了反演参数维数和定位算法复杂度。针对遗传算法的早熟和稳定性差的问题,改进了似然函数的经验表达式。将多维后验概率密度在参数起伏变化范围内积分,得到反演参数的一维边缘概率分布,求解最优值的同时进行反演结果的不确定性分析。本文仿真了位于相同距离、不同深度的两个声源,使用仿真实验验证了提出算法的有效性。     

Sensor position estimation and source ranging in a shallow water environment

Underwater acoustic transient signals are generated mechanically at known positions along a wharf. These signals are received by a wide aperture planar array of four underwater acoustic sensors, whose positions relative to the wharf are unknown. A method is described that enables the positions of the sensors to be estimated from accurate differential time-of-arrival measurements (with 0.1 /spl mu/s precision) as the signal wavefronts traverse the array. A comparison of the estimated positions with the nominal positions of the first three sensors, which form a 20-m-wide aperture horizontal line array, reveals a 2-cm displacement of the middle sensor from the line array axis. This slight bowing of the line array results in overranging (bias error of 3%) when the wavefront curvature method is used with the nominal collinear sensor positions to locate a static source of active sonar transmissions at a range of 59.2 m. The use of the spherical intersection method coupled with the estimated sensor positions of the line array provides an order of magnitude improvement in the range estimate (within 0.3% of the actual value). However, systematic ranging errors are observed when the sound propagation medium becomes nonstationary. Next, the differences in the arrival times of the direct path and boundary-reflected path signals at the middle sensor of the wide aperture line array are estimated using the differential phase residue of the analytic signal at the sensor output. These multipath delays are used to estimate the range and depth of the source. Although the average value of the multipath range estimates is within 0.5% of the actual value, the variance of the range estimates is 50 times larger when compared with the results of the spherical intersection and wavefront curvature methods. The multipath delay data are also processed to provide a reliable estimate of the temporal variation in the water depth enabling the tidal variation to be observed.     

Identification of hydrodynamic coefficients in ship maneuvering equations of motion by Estimation-Before-Modeling technique

Estimation-Before-Modeling (EBM) technique (or the two-step method) is a system identification method that estimates parameters in a dynamic model. Given sea trial data, the extended Kalman filter and modified Bryson–Frazier smoother can be used to estimate motion variables, hydrodynamic force, and the speed and the direction of current. And using these estimated data, we can use the ridge regression method to estimate the hydrodynamic coefficients in a model. An identifiable state space model is constructed in case that current effect is included and the maneuvering characteristics of a ship are analyzed by correlation analysis. To better identify hydrodynamic coefficients, we suggest the sub-optimal input scenario that considers the D-optimal criterion. Finally, the algorithm is confirmed against real sea trial data of 113K tanker.     

基于水声环境空间中多模态深度融合模型的目标识别方法研究

随着对水下目标特性研究的深入和声学探测技术的发展,基于单模态的阵列式信息融合或基于空间信息的分布式信息融合的水下目标识别方法研究已有一定成果,但针对复杂海况导致单一物理场或单一融合层次的系统识别性能提高有限等方面影响的水下目标识别方法研究还有所不足,因此,开展基于多模态深度融合模型的水下目标识别方法研究可利用模态互补,共享信息而提升识别率。文中在国内外研究基础上,深入研究了基于到达时差法和多模态方法组合的检测方法,初步形成了基于水声环境空间中多模态深度融合模型的识别框架,开展了海洋中典型自然与人为事件的信号分析与特征提取,并在此基础上,设计新型基于海底基站的被动识别系统。该系统同步记录和由位置等组成的时间序列标记声、磁和压数据,可实现高精度、高分辨率的识别。本研究可满足未来海洋观测对高性能水下目标探测、定位和跟踪系统的迫切需要,为海洋安全监管、海洋突发事件应急响应等领域提供新的技术手段和科学参考。     

Time-domain geoacoustic inversion of high-frequency chirp signal from a simple towed system

An inversion method using a towed system consisting of a source and two receivers is presented. High-frequency chirp signals that have been emitted from the source are received after multiple penetrations and reflections from the shallow water sub-bottom structure and are processed for geoacoustical parameter estimation. The data are processed such that a good resolution and robustness is achieved via matched filtering, which requires information about the source signal. The inversion is formulated as an optimization problem, which maximizes the cost function defined as a normalized correlation between the measured and modeled signals directly in the time domain. The very fast simulated reannealing optimization method is applied to the global search problem. The modeled time signal is obtained using a ray approach. An experiment was carried out in the Mediterranean Sea using a towed source and receiver system. The inversion method is applied to the experimental data and results are found to be consistent with previous frequency-domain analyses using measurements from a towed horizontal array of receivers and measurements on a vertical array.     

两种基于贝叶斯点估计理论的多声源定位方法研究

海洋环境参数失配是制约匹配场定位性能的主要因素之一。为了克服环境失配,本文基于贝叶斯理论,将环境参数与声源的距离和深度一起作为未知量进行反演。然而在进行多声源定位时,反演参数的维数几何增长,极大地增加了反演问题的复杂性和计算量。为此本文将声源强度和噪声方差表示成其极大似然估计值,从而将这些参数进行隐式采样,大大降低了反演的维数和难度。文章比较了两种贝叶斯点估计方法,最大后验概率密度方法和最大边缘后验概率密度方法。最大后验概率密度方法的解是令后验概率密度取得最大值的参数组合,可以利用优化算法快速获得。最大边缘后验概率密度法将其他参数积分,得到目标参数的一维边缘概率分布,分布的最大值为反演结果。该方法得到最优估计值的同时可以获取参数估计的不确定信息。在环境参数和声源参数都未知的情况下,利用蒙特卡洛法在不同信噪比情况下对两种声源定位方法进行分析,实验结果表明：(1)对于敏感参数,如声源距离、水深和海水声速,最大边缘后验概率密度法比最大边缘后验概率密度方法的性能好。(2)对于较不敏感的参数,如海底声速、海底密度和海底声衰减,当信噪比较低时,最大边缘后验概率密度方法能较好地平滑噪声,从而比最大边缘后验概率密度法具有更好的性能。由于声源距离和深度是敏感参数,研究表明最大边缘后验概率密度法提供了一种在不确知环境下更可靠的多声源定位方法。     

An underwater towed electromagnetic source for geophysical exploration

Low-frequency electromagnetic methods are used in geophysical exploration to detect the magnetic field distortion between a transmitter and receiver produced by locally conductive bodies. Both ground and airborne systems are in current use. It is possible to similarly conduct underwater geophysical exploration by using an underwater towed source of electromagnetic radiation and a receiving magnetic or electric field detector. The receiver can be towed on an auxiliary cable, mounted on a boom on the towing platform, or land based. An underwater towed electromagnetic source suitable for ocean-bottom exploration has been constructed, and its underwater propagation characteristics at low frequency have been studied. This underwater calibrated source (UCS) is 4 m long, weighs 383 kg in air, and can produce vertical and horizontal magnetic dipoles and a horizontal electric dipole. Powered by a current-feedback-controlled, high-power, modified sonar amplifier, the UCS can produce 9710 ampereturn.m2 of magnetic dipole or 200 A.m of electric dipole at 50 A at frequencies up to 200 Hz without significant attenuation from coil inductance. This paper concentrates on the mechanical, hydrodynamic, and magnetic design details of the UCS and the electrical system, consisting of the high-current drive power system and the shipboard monitoring system for attitude and depth detectors.     

A voting-based approach for fast object recognition in underwateracoustic images

This paper describes a voting-based approach for the fast automatic recognition of man-made objects and related attitude estimation in underwater acoustic images generated by forward-looking sonars or acoustic cameras. In general, the continuous analysis of sequences of images is a very heavy task for human operators and this is due to the poor quality of acoustic images. Hence, algorithms able to recognize an object on the basis of a priori knowledge of the model and to estimate its attitude with reference to a global coordinate system are very useful to facilitate underwater operations like object manipulation or vehicle navigation. The proposed method is capable of recognizing objects and estimating their two-dimensional attitude by using information coming from boundary segments and their angular relations. It is based on a simple voting approach directly applied to the edge discontinuities of underwater acoustic images, whose quality is usually affected by some undesired effects such as object blurring, speckle noise, and geometrical distortions degrading the edge detection. The voting approach is robust, with respect to these effects, so that good results are obtained even with images of very poor quality. The sequences of simulated and real acoustic images are presented in order to test the validity of the proposed method in terms of average estimation error and computational load     

3-D shape recovery of planar and curved surfaces from shading cuesin underwater images

Automatic construction of high-resolution topographical maps, or determining the shape of man-made objects, targets, and obstacles for localization, identification, and/or recognition, is an important capability in the application of autonomous or intelligent underwater vehicles. In this paper, we investigate the application of underwater image models for the reconstruction of three-dimensional object shapes from the shading cues in two-dimensional optical images. We first present the results of a sensitivity analysis in support of a simplified model for a Lambertian surface illuminated by a point source in an attenuating medium, proposed in earlier work. We then generalize a closed-form solution for planar scenes, previously proposed for negligible source-camera baseline, to the case where the baseline may be increased to minimize backscatter effects. For curved surfaces, we propose two techniques based on different iterative updating strategies to recursively improve the recovered surface shape. We study the performance of various methods using synthetic data and real images acquired under different turbidity conditions     

Inverse estimation of drifting-object outflows using actual observation data

The present study attempts to establish a scientifically reliable method capable of computing the drifting-object sources and their outflows. First, the temporal variability of the drifting-object amount is investigated every two months on a beach west of Japan, where various source regions are anticipated because of spatiotemporally variable northeastward ocean currents over the East China Sea. Next, in order to specify drifting-object sources, two-way particle tracking model (PTM) experiments are carried out using simulated ocean currents and leeway drift estimated from QuikSCAT/Seawinds wind data. Finally, an inverse method with a Lagrange multiplier is applied to estimate drifting-object outflows at each source on the basis of the two-way PTM results and beach surveys. Accuracy of object-source identification using the two-way PTM is validated by comparing disposable-lighter sources suggested by phone numbers printed on the lighter surface with those computed by the model. In order to examine the reliability of the inverse estimation, the number of plastic-bottle caps found in actual beach surveys is compared with that computed using a forward in-time PTM during the same period of actual beach surveys, over which the outflows obtained using the inverse method are given at each source in the model.     

Design and analysis of a high-intensity LED lighting module for underwater illumination

Replacing traditional light sources with light-emitting diode (LED) light modules is a global trend, especially for underwater illumination. The light intensity is dispersed evenly at all emission angles in traditional underwater light sources that use the radiative transfer model, resulting in the inclusion of scattering factors in the attenuation coefficient. The high directionality of LED light source modules causes the light intensity transfer in water to vary according to varying emission angles. This renders traditional underwater optical transfer theory irrelevant as an underwater LED light module design reference. Therefore, this study constructs an underwater LED light source transfer model using the light-field average cosine and the light transfer scattering probability method, and imports the LED luminous intensity distribution curve (LIDC) and axial luminous intensity. Experimental results showed that the illumination intensity of the underwater LED illumination module was less than 10% of the simulation. Therefore, this design method can be used to design the required illumination light modules for different underwater environments. Finally, the LED light module has been used for under water fish attractor lighting and enhanced the illumination zone efficiency (m³ per Watt) of 81% compared to the traditional high intensity discharge (HID) underwater fish attractor lamp.     

Application of the ALE technique for underwater explosion analysis of a submarine liquefied oxygen tank

The design of submarines has continually evolved to improve survivability. Explosions may induce local damage as well as global collapse to a submarine. Therefore, it is important to realistically estimate the possible damage conditions due to underwater explosions in the design stage. The present study applied the Arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) technique, a fluid–structure interaction approach, to simulate an underwater explosion and investigate the survival capability of a damaged submarine liquefied oxygen tank. The Lagrangian–Eulerian coupling algorithm, the equations of state for explosives and seawater, and the simple calculation method for explosive loading were also reviewed. It is shown that underwater explosion analysis using the ALE technique can accurately evaluate structural damage after attack. This procedure could be applied quantitatively to real structural design.     

Range and depth estimation using a vertical array in a correlatedmultipath environment

The effects of correlation between time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) estimates on the localization of an underwater source in a direct-surface reflected propagation environment is investigated for a two-element vertical array with omnidirectional sensors. Expressions for the covariance matrix of the noisy TDOAs are derived. The results show that the estimated TDOAs are correlated and that the degree of correlation depends on the relative location of the source. Expressions for variances of range and depth estimators are developed using a least-squares technique. The results show that the expressions for variances of the range and depth estimators can be in error by as much as a factor 3.3 if the correlation among the TDOAs is ignored. The expressions for the covariances of the TDOAs and the expressions for the variances of the range and depth, which incorporate the correlation in the TDOAs, are corroborated with Monte Carlo simulations     

Estimation of hydrodynamic coefficients for an AUV using nonlinear observers

Hydrodynamic coefficients strongly affect the dynamic performance of an autonomous underwater vehicle. Although these coefficients are generally obtained experimentally such as through the planar-motion-mechanism (PMM) test, the measured values are not completely reliable because of experimental difficulties and errors involved. Another approach by which these coefficients can be obtained is the observer method, in which a model-based estimation algorithm predicts the coefficients. In this paper, the hydrodynamic coefficients are estimated using two nonlinear observers - a sliding mode observer and an extended Kalman filter. Their performances are evaluated by comparing the estimated coefficients obtained from the two observer methods with the values as determined from the PMM test. By using the estimated coefficients, a sliding mode controller is constructed for the diving and steering maneuver. It is demonstrated that the controller with the estimated values maintains the desired depth and path with sufficient accuracy.     

Survey of underwater robot positioning navigation

Underwater robot positioning and navigation achieve autonomous underwater robot movement based on the premise that positioning obtains the coordinates of the relative position of the underwater robot using a sensor, and navigation yields a known location to the destination path planning. Due to the location of an underwater robot and the complex and changing environment in which it operates, it is difficult to achieve precise positioning using the traditional positioning method. This paper systematically analyzes and summarizes several typical localization and navigation methods of underwater robots, such as multisensor information fusion technology, underwater acoustic localization and navigation methods, GPS buoy, underwater vision, SLAM and coordinate localization and navigation of multiple underwater robots. Multisensory information fusion technology integrates the advantages of the above methods, enhances the system stability and robustness, overcomes the disadvantages of traditional positioning and navigation, and enables the autonomous navigation and positioning of underwater robots. Underwater acoustics enable flexible and convenient positioning, whereas GPS can achieve high-precision and high-positioning navigation information, and visual positioning effectively overcomes the problem of error accumulation. Multirobot cooperative positioning resolves the problem of positioning failure caused by the collapse of a single system and completes complex tasks that cannot be completed by a single robot, thus enhancing the stability and robustness of the system. This paper systematically describes the realization of these methods, presents an actual analysis of their respective advantages and problems, and discusses the development of the field of research prospects and application prospects.     

Chemical plume tracing via an autonomous underwater vehicle

Olfactory-based mechanisms have been hypothesized for biological behaviors including foraging, mate-seeking, homing, and host-seeking. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) capable of such chemical plume tracing feats would have applicability in searching for environmentally interesting phenomena, unexploded ordinance, undersea wreckage, and sources of hazardous chemicals or pollutants. This article presents an approach and experimental results using a REMUS AUV to find a chemical plume, trace the chemical plume to its source, and maneuver to reliably declare the source location. The experimental results are performed using a plume of Rhodamine dye developed in a turbulent, near-shore, oceanic fluid flow.