Aquagel from PolySciTech used in development of inflatable underwater Naval sonar sensors

 

Compressive sensors enable sonar detection underwater with less hardware complexity. This allows for cheap, easily deployable, efficient, sonar detection systems that can be used for a wide array of applications. Recently, researchers at the Office of Naval Research Science & Technology utilized Aquagel from Akina, Inc. (https://akinainc.com/polyscitech/products/aquagel/index.php) to develop underwater deployable sonar sensing arrays. This research holds promise to improve detection capabilities for both civillian and military applications. Read more: Ouyang, Bing. Robust Co-Prime Sensing with Underwater Inflatable Passive Sonar Arrays. FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIV FORT PIERCE FL, 2022. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1169163.pdf 

“ABSTRACT: This final technical report describes the effort from May 2018 to September 2021 to accomplish the project objective of Robust Co-Prime Sensing with Underwater Inflatable Passive Sonar Arrays. In many scientific and defense surveillance missions, reducing the sensing systems’ size, weight, and power (SWaP) is critical to accomplishing the intended objectives [1]. The long-term goal of this research is to develop energy-efficient and low-cost underwater inflatable structures that will be the building blocks in many naval applications. While compressive sensing (CS) has been adopted at the backend to maintain signal fidelity with fewer data and reduce the sensing hardware’s complexity, SWaP reduction can also be achieved with intelligent mechanical design. The inflatable structure is adopted for the mechanical design of this sonar array. The inflatable structure, also called the deployable structure, is a folded package with compact stowed dimensions. It can be detached from a carrying platform and morphs into its final form at the destination. On the algorithm side, the concept of the co-prime array is adopted. A co-prime array employs two interleaved uniform linear subarrays with several co-prime elements and inter-element spacing. It can resolve a much higher number of sources than a conventional uniform half-wavelength spaced array for a given number of sensors. Therefore, integrating these two concepts, i.e., “two-way compression,” reduces both the structural dimension of a sonar array and the number of hydrophones in the array. During the three-year funding period, the team investigated alternatives to the conventional Mechanical Based Expansion (MBE), including Physics-Based Expansion (PBE) and Chemical Based Expansion (CBE). The feasibility of these techniques, particularly the PBE approach, has been validated through numerical modeling, lab test, and field study. Our study has produced two pending patents, and one journal paper (in press). The results have also been presented at multiple technical conferences.”