SCIENTIFIC SYSTEMS CO INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A18-042

Description

Small arms fire is still one of the greatest threats to military personnel on the ground in theater of operation. While there are body worn sensors for detecting small arms fire, a helmet mounted system is an ideal platform for protecting dismounted personnel. Existing acoustic systems provide protection, but perform poorly in reverberant environments, such as urban spaces. A combination of acoustic sensors and microbolometers represents a more robust approach to addressing the threat of small arms fire. Infrared imaging technology has become smaller, more cost effective, and readily available, and can provide effective sensing in low light and visually obscured conditions. Instead of using full imaging arrays, the proposed approach uses a linear array of COTS single sensors elements with overlapping fields of view to minimize processing needs and weight. Each sensing element has a passband for the narrowband gunfire signal and a guardband looking for overlapping broadband distractors signals such as sunlight or halogen bulbs. The combination of pass and guard bands, with a temporal profile filter, allow robust false alarm rejection. The proposed system leverages an existing helmet mounted acoustic design for physical mounting, user interface, and acoustic sensing for increased false alarm rejection and improved accuracy.