passive platform for tracking underwater vehicles

Over recent years, the trend in Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) design has been to reduce vehicle size and cost. On board navigation systems are both large and expensive so alternate solutions for vehicle positioning are required. The thesis explores the performance of a passive platform, the Ambient Noise Sonar (ANS), in remotely detecting, localizing and tracking submersible vessels. This task is achieved by exploiting communication signatures emitted by the moving submersible. The utility modem integrated on the AUV can be operated in a PSK and a MFSK mode. It was demonstrated that the ANS successfully tracks AUVs in both cases. First, the thesis presents the sonar beamformer and shows its potential for tracking by using the AUV communication signals. It describes a scheme developed to enhance the processor performance in a multi-target configuration and clutter. Then, it discusses promising tracking results from experiments conducted in summer and fall 1998, off the coast of South Florida.