CREARE LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N231-048

Description

Sea mines are a persistent threat to naval operations. Mines are inexpensive to fabricate and easy to deploy, making them a favorite tool of our adversaries. The Navy is actively developing new countermine technologies to defeat this threat more quickly and efficiently than ever before. However, countermining operations still require manual battle damage assessment (BDA) to verify target neutralization, slowing operational tempo. Future mine neutralization systems will likely include ultrashort baseline arrays (USBLA) of hydrophones for acoustic communication and tracking. Opportunistically, the USBLA will also capture the underwater explosion (UNDEX) waveforms from the countermine charge and any sympathetic mine detonations. These waveforms contain sufficient information for near-instantaneous and automatic BDA. Creare proposes to develop the Automated UNDEX Damage Assessment Tool (AUDAT), a suite of algorithms suitable for deployment on a low-power embedded processor that analyze UNDEX waveforms to determine the number of UNDEX events and the bearing, range, depth, and estimated yield of each event. This automated tool will supplant manual BDA, increasing mission tempo. With slight modifications, AUDAT algorithms can also be used for automated battle damage assessment following offensive mining operations. In Phase I we will collect sample UNDEX data on a simulated USBLA, develop candidate AUDAT algorithms, and demonstrate key algorithm performance on a low power embedded system. In Phase II we will refine our algorithms to deal with real-world complications and demonstrate end-to-end performance on a custom embedded prototype.