Research Summaries

Back Seaweb Sensor Network

Fiscal Year 2010
Division Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Science
Department Physics
Investigator(s) Rice, Joseph A.
Sponsor Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (DoD)
Summary Project Description: Seaweb is an underwater acoustic network with in situ sensor nodes, repeater nodes, and gateway nodes. Existing Seaweb components will be deployed during the DoD Thunderstorm Spiral-3 exercise to demonstrate capability to deliver a near-real-time alert on the presence of a go-fast or SPSS vessel. Objective & Payoff: This project will demonstrate the current technology readiness level of the hydro-acoustic vector sensors, autonomous detection & classification processing, through-water networked delivery of contact reports, and telemetry of actionable data via Iridium SATCOM to the watch floor at JIATF-S. This autonomous surveillance capability will provide a force multiplier allowing our manned platforms to be used more advantageously. What current problem does this project address? This capability addresses the proliferation of maritime threats such as go-fast and SPSS vessels. It fills a gap in our ability to effectively sense these targets in the maritime environment. How will this project solve the above problem? Seaweb sensor networks are rapidly deployable, scalable architectures providing wide-area surveillance. Sensor placement on the seabed is known to be optimal, and a distributed placement of such sensors can yield a tripwire or barrier or chokepoint coverage as the initial step in countering the activities of threat vessels. Benefit to the Warfighter: Near-real-time reporting of targets of interest by autonomous sensors will permit the theater commander to more effectively direct his manned assets to prosecute potential threat vessels.
Keywords
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal