Sustainable coastal sensor networks: technologies and challenges

This paper describes a distributed sensor network for a coastal maritime security system. This concept incorporates a network of small passive and active multi-phenomenological unattended sensors and shore based optical sensors to detect, classify, and track submerged threat objects approaching high value coastal assets, such as ports, harbors, residential, commercial, and military facilities and areas. The network of unattended, in-water sensors perform the initial detection, classification, and coarse tracking and then queues shore based optical laser radar sensors. These shore-based sensors perform a queued sector search to develop a refined track on the submerged threat objects that were initially detected by the unattended sensor network. Potential threat objects include swimmers, small unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV's), small submarines, and submerged barges. All of these threats have the potential to transport threat objects such as explosives, chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear materials. Reliable systems with low false alarm rates (FAR) are proposed. Tens to hundreds of low cost passive sensors are proposed to be deployed conjunctively with several active acoustic and optical sensors in threat and facility dependant patterns to maximize the detection, tracking and classification of submerged threat objects. The integrated command and control system and novel microbial fuel cells to power these sensor networks are also described.