Sensor Data Processing for Tracking Underwater Threats Using Terascale Optical Core Devices

Abstract

A critical aspect of littoral surveillance (including port protection) involves the localization and tracking of underwater threats such as manned or unmanned autonomous underwater vehicles. In this article, we present a methodology for locating underwater threat sources from uncertain sensor network data, and illustrate the threat tracking aspects using active sonars in a matched filter framework. The novelty of the latter paradigm lies in its implementation on a tera-scale optical core processor, EnLight�, recently introduced by Lenslet Laboratories. This processor is optimized for array operations, which it performs in a fixed point arithmetic architecture at tera-scale throughput. Using the EnLight� 64� prototype processor, our results (i) illustrate the ability to reach a robust tracking accuracy, and (ii) demonstrate that a considerable speed-up (a factor of over 13,000) can be achieved when compared to an Intel XeonTM processor in the computation of sets of 80K-sample complex Fourier transforms that are associated with our matched filter techniques.