• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.53 no.5
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• pp.55-65
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• 2016

Detecting an object which is located at seabed is an important issue for various areas. This paper presents an approach to detection of an object that is placed at seabed in the shallow water. A conventional scheme is to employ a side-scan sonar to obtain images of a detection area and to use image processing schemes to recognize an object. Since this approach relies on high frequency signals to get clear images, its detection range becomes shorter and the processing time is getting longer. In this paper, we consider an active sonar system that is repeatedly sending a linear frequency modulated signal of 6~20 kHz in the shallow water of 100m depth. The proposed approach is to model consecutively received reflected signals and to measure their modeling error magnitudes which decide the existence of an object placed on seabed depending on relative magnitude with respect to threshold value. The feature of this approach is to only require an assumption that the seabed consists of an homogeneous sediment, and not to require a prior information on the specific properties of the sediment. We verify the proposed approach in terms of detection probability through computer simulation.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2024

For measuring the performance of passive sonars, we usually consider the maximum Detection Range (DR) under the environment and system parameters in operation. In shallow water, where sound waves inevitably interacts with sea surface or bottom, detection generally maintains up to the maximum range. In deep water, however, sound waves may not interact with sea surface or/and bottom, and thus there may exist shadow zones where sound waves can hardly reach. In this situation, DR alone may not completely define the performance of each sonar. For complete description of sonar performance, we employ the concept 'Robustness Of Detection (ROD)'. In the coastal region of the East Sea, the spatial variations of water masses have close relations with DR and ROD, where the two parameters show reverse spatial variations in general. The spatial and temporal analysis of the temperature by employing the Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) shows that the 1-st mode represents typical pattern of seasonal variation and the 2-nd mode represents strength variations of mixed layers and currents. The two modes are estimated to explain about 92 % of the variations. Assuming two types of targets located at the depths of 5 m (shallow) and 100 m (deep), the passive sonar performance (DR) gives high negative correlations (about -0.9) with the first two modes. Most of temporal variations of temperature occur from the surface up to 200 m in the water column so that when we assume a target at 100 m, we can expect detection performance of little seasonal variations with passive sonars below 100 m.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.259-266
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• 2003

Due to the growth of population and industrial development at the coastal cities, there has been much increase in necessity to effective control of the wastes into the coastal water and river. The amount of disposal at those waters has been increased rapidly ana it is necessary for us to track of it in order to keep the waterway safe and the water clean. The investigation and research in terms of water quality in these regions have been conducted frequently but the systematic survey of the disposed wastes at the bottom was neglected and/or minor. In this study we surveyed the status of disposed waste distribution at the bottom of coastal water and river from the scanned images. The intensity of sound received by the side scan sonar tow fish from the sea floor provides information as to the general distribution and characteristics of the superficial wastes. The port and starboard side scanned images produced from two arrays of transducers borne on a tow fish connected by tow cable to a tug boat have the area with width of 22m~112m and band of 44m~224m. All data are displayed in real-time on a high-resolution color display ($1280{\times}1024$ pixels) together with position information by DGPS. From the field measurement and analysis of the recorded images, we could draw the location and distribution of bottom disposals. Furthermore, we could make a database system which might be useful for navigation and fundamental for planning the waste reception and process control system.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.31-36
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• 2001

Passive sonar system forms the various beams in any desired directions to obtain the improvement in Signal-to-Noise (S/N) ratio, bearing detection and localization of targets, and the attenuation of interferences from other directions. The improvement of beamforming is very important to detect modern underwater targets as noise reduction technology leads to considerably low-level acoustic emissions in the long range in complex environmental sea. In this paper, we proposed the spatial cross correlation beamforming (SCCBF) algorithm using cross correlation matrix of individual hydrophone pairs of linear array sensors. By the theoretical analysis and simulation, the proposed SCCBF is demonstrated that its performances compared to conventional beamforming (CBF) output can be obtain above 3dB of array gain and about half of beam width represented the bearing accuracy in target detection. Also, this paper presents sea test result of linear passive sonar system that the proposed algorithm implemented.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.65 no.1
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• pp.135-141
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• 2016

Recently, the needs for the development and application of marine robots are increasing as marine accidents occur frequently. However, it is very difficult to acquire the information by utilizing marine robots in the marine environment. Therefore, the needs for the researches of sensor networks which are composed of underwater, surface and aerial robots are increasing in order to acquire the information effectively as the information from heterogeneous robots has less limitation in terms of coverage and connectivity. Although various researches of the sensor network which is based on marine robots have been executed, all of the underwater, surface and aerial robots have not yet been considered in the sensor network. To solve this problem, a collaborative control method based on the acoustic information and image by the sonars of the underwater robot, the acoustic information by the sonar of the surface robot and the optical image by the camera of the static-floating aerial robot is proposed. To verify the performance of the proposed method, the collaborative control of a MUR(Micro Underwater Robot) with an OAS(Obstacle Avoidance Sonar) and a SSS(Side Scan Sonar), a MSR(Micro Surface Robot) with an OAS and a BMAR(Balloon-based Micro Aerial Robot) with a camera are executed. The test results show the possibility of real applications and the need for additional studies.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.675-683
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• 1992

Mapping and navigation system based on certainty grids for an autonomous mobile robt operating in unknown and unstructured environment is described. The system uses sonar range data to build a map of robot's surroundings. The range data from sonar sensor are integrated into a probability map that is composed of two dimensional grids which contain the probabilities of being occupied by the objects in the environment. A Bayesian model is used to estimate the uncertainty of the sensor information and to update the existing probability map with new range data. The resulting two dimensional map is used for path planning and navigation. In this paper, the Bayesian updating model which was successfully simulated in our earlier work is implemented on a mobile robot and is shown to be valid in the real world through experiment. This paper also proposes a technique for reducing for reducing specular reflection problem of sonar system which seriousely deteriorates the map quality, and a new path planning method based on weighted distance, which enables the robot to efficiently navigate in an unknown area.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.351-360
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• 2020

Of late, demand for test sites for marine equipment such as ASV, AUV, ROV, and various underwater sensors is increasing. The authors have focused on an oscillating water column (OWC), which is being constructed near Chagwido Island Jeju, as one of the test-sites. The main objective of the OWC is to produce wave energy and develop technologies. It has been built in the sea approximately 1 km off the coast. It has berth accommodation and some rooms that can be used as laboratories. To investigate the feasibility of its usage as a test site for marine equipment, we acquired bathymetric data around the OWC by using a multi-beam echo sounder and a single-beam scanning sonar. The accessibility of the OWC from nearby ports and the use of support vessels or ships were also investigated. 3D point cloud data from the multi-beam echo sounder and 2D acoustic images from the scanning sonar are expected to be used as references for identifying changes over time. In addition, through these experiments, we derived a procedure to use this facility as a test site by using the IDEF0 functional modelling method. Based on this preliminary investigation and previously reported examples, we determined the general conditions and preferences for evaluating the performance of various marine equipment heuristically. Finally, we developed five applications that were derived from this investigation.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.522-533
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• 2019

The compressive sensing model for range-Doppler estimation can be expressed as an under-determined linear system y = Ax. To find the solution of the linear system with the compressive sensing method, matrix A should be sufficiently incoherent and x to be sparse. In this paper, we propose a transmission waveform design method that maintains the bandwidth required by the sonar system while lowering the mutual coherence of the matrix A so that the matrix A is incoherent. The proposed method combines two methods of optimizing the sensing matrix with the alternating projection and suppressing unwanted frequency bands using the DFT (Discrete Fourier Transform) matrix. We compare range-Doppler estimation performance of existing waveform LFM(Linear Frequency Modulated) and designed waveform using the matched filter and the compressive sensing method. Simulation shows that the designed transmission waveform has better detection performance than the existing waveform LFM.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Fisheries and Ocean Technology
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.16-25
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• 2015

Visual census and hydro-acoustic survey was carried out at Ulju small scale marine ranching area (MRA) to estimate demersal fish aggregations on September and November 2013. In this hydro-acoustic survey, the authors combined an image sonar with a scientific echo sounder to monitor an underwater situation and compare two acoustic data. Consequently, visual census survey was useful to estimate fish species composition for hydro-acoustic survey, because it is easy to identify aggregated fish species and overcome limits on a fishing depth and ability of an conventional fishing gear like a bottom gill-net or a fish trap at marine ranching area. Mean fish density was estimated as $0.757g/m^2$ on September and $0.219g/m^2$ on November and Fish abundance was finally calculated as 1.51ton (coefficient of variation, CV=13.1%) on September and 0.44ton (CV=47.7%) on November, respectively. Hydro-acoustic survey combined with the image sonar was useful to monitor fish aggregations and estimate fish stocks around artificial reefs at shallow coastal MRA. We were able to easily identify the underwater structures like an artificial reef and a fishing rope as well as fish aggregations from image sonar data. Therefore, the method was effective to separate unwanted echo signals in acoustic data of scientific echo sounder.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.23 no.8
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• pp.707-721
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• 2002

Seafloor acoustic image data using the side scan sonar system were gathered on the Sindu-ri offshore near the Taean peninsula, middle western Korea. The relationship between the back-scattering acoustic intensity and the sea-bottom sediment properties was studied. And these two data sets were compared and interpreted with the water depth, respectively. Most of sediment properties were correlated well to the acoustic intensity, however the distribution patterns of the sea-bottom sediment and the seafloor acoustic image were not similar to each other except the rocky bottom area. The water depth was not only influential on the distribution pattern of seafloor acoustic image but also showed a linear relation with the sediment properties distribution.