Source localization corrections for airborne acoustic platforms based on a climatological assessment of temperature and wind velocity profiles

Acoustic sensors are being employed on airborne platforms, such as Persistent Threat Detection System (PTDS) and Persistent Ground Surveillance System (PGSS), for source localization. Under certain atmospheric conditions, airborne sensors oer a distinct advantage over ground sensors. The performance of both ground and airborne sensors is aected by environmental factors, such as atmospheric turbulence and wind and temperature proles. For airborne sensors, the eects of refraction must be accounted for in order to determine the source coordinates. Such a method for ground-to-air applications has been developed and is further rened here. Ideally, knowledge of the exact atmospheric proles will allow for the most accurate mitigation of refractive eects. However, acoustic sensors deployed in theater are rarely supported by atmospheric sensing systems that retrieve real-time temperature and wind elds. Atmospheric conditions evolve through seasons, time of day, and are strongly location dependent. Therefore, the development of an atmospheric proles database based on a long time series climatological assessment will provide knowledge for use in physics-based bearing estimation algorithms, where otherwise no correction would have been performed. Long term atmospheric data sets from weather modeling systems are used for a climatological assessment of the refraction corrections and localization errors over selected sites.