USA as Represented by Secretary of the Navy

Darrell E Marsh

Eric James Whitesell

Shelby F Sullivan

A system locates the elements of a randomly dispersed, untethered, array of sonobuoys from which are suspended active, transmitting, transducer elets and passive, receiving, transducer elements. The system comprises a data conditioning unit which receives high-frequency element-locating signals from a radio receiver, which may be located on an aircraft, and processes them so that they are quantized at its output. An acoustic delay processor, whose input is connected to the output of the data conditioning unit, correlates a reference signal R received from an active element suspended from the sonobuoy with a corresponding received signal from another element, active or passive, suspended from another sonobuoy. A position tracker, whose input is connnected to the output of the acoustic delay processor, calculates the relative position of each element of the random array from the propagation delays measured by the acoustic delay processor. An operator interface, having inputs to and outputs from, the position tracker is used to enter and display appropriate system and processing parameters.

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San Diego, CA, United States of America

Darrell E Marsh