Development of a hardware based underwater target identification system

An underwater target identification system comprising of a sensing element signal conditioner and a digital signal processor used for identifying targets of interest is presented in this paper. The sensing element picks up the noise waveforms emanating from the targets and the signal conditioner pre-processes and filters the captured signal into the desired spectral band for signal analysis. Signature features of the captured signal are extracted using the power spectral statistics implemented in a digital signal processing hardware. The features extracted are then compared with those available in the knowledge base, using pattern matching techniques, leading to the identification of underwater targets.