Detection localization and tracking of aircraft using Sparse distributed passive acoustic system

Abstract

Stevens Institute of Technology has conducted extensive long-term testing of acoustic systems designed to track low-flying small aircraft in remote location and recorded over 2 years of data. The system consisted of 4 nodes placed in difficult remote terrain with separation ranging 1–4 km, each node comprising a pyramid-shaped volumetric cluster of 5 microphones an embedded computer, and a pan-tilt-zoom camera steered to detected targets in real time. and communication device. Each nodes' computer performed direction of arrival finding communicated to a central computer collected that data and processed it to generate tracks and classify targets. The duration and the scale of the deployment allowed to identify and solve many problems, including the effects of propagation delays between station and on cooperative localization and tracking, the seasonal changes in environmental noise, persistent and transient noise sources, and the diversity of targets of opportunity and their signatures. The propagation de...