Autonomous Undersea Observations

Abstract : LONG-TERM GOALS. The U.S. Navy requires advances in environmental sensing over extended areas and over time, or so-called 4-D sensing. The goal is to provide more capable, better integrated, and less expensive sensor systems for a variety of applications, including measurement of physical characteristics of the ocean, threat detection, and timely transmission of the data to end users. OBJECTIVES. The original objective of this program was the development of a generic capability to support multiple autonomous environmental sensors within an acoustic modem-based infrastructure capable of communicating to and from the sensors and to and from the outside world. The outside world would be either an adjacent node (e.g., a Seaweb node) or a surface buoy. The focus of this effort has narrowed to the development of two devices: one is an integrated ADCP/modem, and the other is a self-contained ASW sonar and modem.