• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.214-224
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• 2024

Sonobuoys are disposable devices that utilize sound waves for information gathering, detecting engine noises, and capturing various acoustic characteristics. They play a crucial role in accurately detecting underwater targets, making them effective detection systems in anti-submarine warfare. Existing sonobuoy deployment methods in multistatic systems often rely on fixed patterns or heuristic-based rules, lacking efficiency in terms of the number of sonobuoys deployed and operational time due to the unpredictable mobility of the underwater targets. Thus, this paper proposes an optimal sonobuoy placement strategy for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to overcome the limitations of conventional sonobuoy deployment methods. The proposed approach utilizes reinforcement learning in a simulation-based experimental environment that considers the movements of the underwater targets. The Unity ML-Agents framework is employed, and the Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) algorithm is utilized for UAV learning in a virtual operational environment with real-time interactions. The reward function is designed to consider the number of sonobuoys deployed and the cost associated with sound sources and receivers, enabling effective learning. The proposed reinforcement learning-based deployment strategy compared to the conventional sonobuoy deployment methods in the same experimental environment demonstrates superior performance in terms of detection success rate, deployed sonobuoy count, and operational time.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.9-18
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• 2024

The importance of active sonar systems is emerging due to the quietness of underwater targets and the increase in ambient noise due to the increase in maritime traffic. However, the low signal-to-noise ratio of the echo signal due to multipath propagation of the signal, various clutter, ambient noise and reverberation makes it difficult to identify underwater targets using active sonar. Attempts have been made to apply data-based methods such as machine learning or deep learning to improve the performance of underwater target recognition systems, but it is difficult to collect enough data for training due to the nature of sonar datasets. Methods based on mathematical modeling have been mainly used to compensate for insufficient active sonar data. However, methodologies based on mathematical modeling have limitations in accurately simulating complex underwater phenomena. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a sonar signal synthesis method based on a deep neural network. In order to apply the neural network model to the field of sonar signal synthesis, the proposed method appropriately corrects the attention-based encoder and decoder to the sonar signal, which is the main module of the Tacotron model mainly used in the field of speech synthesis. It is possible to synthesize a signal more similar to the actual signal by training the proposed model using the dataset collected by arranging a simulated target in an actual marine environment. In order to verify the performance of the proposed method, Perceptual evaluation of audio quality test was conducted and within score difference -2.3 was shown compared to actual signal in a total of four different environments. These results prove that the active sonar signal generated by the proposed method approximates the actual signal.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.184-191
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• 2022

Underwater acoustic wave in shallow water is propagated through multipath that has a large delay spread causing Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI) and these characteristics deteriorate the performance in the communication system. In order to analyze the communication performance and investigate the correlation with multipath delay spread in a reverberant environment, an underwater acoustic communication experiment using Binary Phase-Shift Keying (BPSK) signals with symbol rates from 100 sym/s to 8000 sym/s was conducted in a 5 × 5 × 5 m³ water tank. The acoustic channels in a well-controlled tank environment had the characteristics of dense multipath delay spread due to multiple reflections from the interfaces and walls within the tank and showed the maximum excess delay of 40 ms or less, and the Root Mean Squared (RMS) delay spread of 8 ms or less. In this paper, the performances of Bit Error Rate (BER) and output Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) were analyzed using four types of communication demodulation techniques. And the parameter, Symbol interval to Delay spread Ratio in reverberant environment (SDR_rev), which is the ratio of symbol interval to RMS delay spread in the reverberant environment is defined. Finally, the SDR_rev was compared to the BER and the output SNR. The results present the reference symbol rate in which high communication performance can be guaranteed.