Towards a passive acoustic underwater system for protecting harbours against intruders

The international rules for the protection of harbors against threats and intruders typically apply to threats emanating from the land side. Protection against actions and threats from the water side is much less regulated, apart from some individual cases. Potential threats from the water side may consist of intruders including divers with and without delivery vehicles, swimmers, small submarines, small vessels or unmanned underwater vehicles. To increase the level of readiness against underwater threats in harbors, the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and the Stevens Institute of Technology have recently combined their long-standing expertise on observation systems and sonar technology and are developing an integrated system that can be used to protect harbors from both surface and underwater intruders. In the fall of 2010, TNO and Stevens will initiate joint experiments in a harbour in The Netherlands, where passive acoustic systems from both parties will be combined. In this paper, potential performance of the experimental system is illustrated via simulations. Initial experimental results will be presented at the conference.