A data fusion and multiple ping method for improving the resolution of low-power acoustic and seismic sensing.
Alexander Apartsin, Nathan Intrator · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2008
Biological research has shown that some mammals use low-power seismic pulses for underground communications and navigation. For instance, the blind mole rat bangs its head against the walls of its underground tunnel to produce seismic signals. It has been demonstrated that this animal builds a three-dimensional map of the environment by collecting and analyzing returned responses. This behavior enables the mole rat to avoid obstacles and voids while it digs its tunnels. Being able to use low-power signals for accurate remote sensing under low signal to noise ratio (15–25 dB) conditions has some important applications (e.g., underground installment detection). A practically used method for coping with noise is based on repeated transmission of identical pulses and averaging the peak value of autocorrelation function from multiple measurements. Our research suggests that by carefully selecting a pulse family and a fusion method of multiple measurements, one can significantly improve sensing resolution. In particular, our simulation results show that employing robust statistics fusion method and by producing sonar pings with a shifting phase, the average error rate of travel time estimates can be reduced by about 30%.