Application of fuzzy logic in multipassive acoustic tracking

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce the application of fuzzy logic concepts to solve the time-delay problem in tracking moving target using passive acoustic sensors. Passive tracking which uses the direction of arrival or bearing of a target is a nontrivial task. The problem is made even more difficult to solve if the passive sensors measurement of bearing is based on acoustic signal only. This is because the acoustic signal introduce time-delay i.e. different senors spatially apart will receive the same target's acoustic signal at different time. The time-delay problem cannot be resolve easily partly because the amplitude of the acoustic signal strength cannot be modeled linearly; its behavior is nonlinear subjected to environmental conditions. To solve these problems we propose to apply the fuzzy logic concept, using information from sensors such as amplitude difference and time-stamp difference from different sensors. The defuzzified results provide one of the main factors for computing the correlation strength between different bearing tracks. The two tracks with the highest correlation strength are then used to determine the position of the target.