Comprehensive Study of Underwater Inflatable Co-prime Sonar Array (UICSA)

The Underwater Inflatable Co-prime Sonar Array (UICSA) follows the Two-Way Compression (TWC) design concept for both structure and algorithm. The structural compression is achieved by inflatable structures and algorithm compression completed using sparse co-prime array configuration. The UICSA benefits from the compact initial volume and cost-efficient design, which is identical to be deployed from autonomous vehicles to form underwater sensing networks efficiently and effectively. The UICSA prototype presented in the paper demonstrates the morphing process of the stowed array after deployment as well as the rigidity of the deployed structure. Besides, we also designed customized dataloggers for UICSA. The UICSA prototype functions are evaluated in preliminary tests and additional field deployment is scheduled to validate the reliability and accuracy.