1,720,967 research outputs found
Underwater detection, classification and localisation: Improving the capabilities of towed sonar arrays
No full textThe end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Warsaw pact have resulted in a change of operational theatre for the naval forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). In particular, the focus of Anti Submarine Warfare forces has shifted from tracking Soviet nuclear ballistic missile submarine in the deep waters of the Atlantic ocean to hunting smaller and quieter Diesel electric submarines in coastal water. In most scenarios, towed array sonars are the best sensor to detect, classify and localise submarines. The long passive towed array sonars used during the Cold war are more difficult to use in coastal waters and are being replaced by most Navies by Low Frequency Active Sonars (LFAS) using a towed source and shorter towed receiving array. These shorter towed arrays can be used in both active and passive modes. In passive mode, their reduced size offer limited performance compared to their longer equivalent. In active mode, they can detect submarines at long ranges in shallow waters but are plagued by false alarms caused by echoes from features of the seafloor. This thesis deals with algorithms improving Detection, Classification and Localisation for towed sonar arrays, with a specific focus on LFAS sonars. In Chapter 2, we derive, analyse and apply to measured data a method for improving detection performance with short passive towed arrays. An important issue in detection of quiet acoustic source with short towed arrays is the improvement in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and bearing resolution for targets emitting low frequency signals. One of the techniques believed to improve these characteristics is Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS). The method is based on the artificial enlargement of a sonar array by coherently integrating acoustic snapshots at different antenna positions. We first derive theoretical measures of performance of passive SAS and report on its application in combination with other signal-processing algorithms. Its theoretical performance is compared with that of the frequently used incoherent integration. The used passive SAS algorithm is the method known as Extended Towed Array Measurement (ETAM) or the overlap correlator. It is based on the correlation of data snapshots on overlapping hydrophones. Correlation is a key issue in this method and since it is affected by noisy targets, some gain can be expected from noise cancellation. The influence on the performance of ETAM of a method of tow ship noise cancelling at hydrophone level (Inverse Beam Forming, IBF) is analysed. This approach increases ETAM performance by removing a loud and highly correlated noise source, the tow ship, and thus enhancing the other targets in the beam pattern. The results of the algorithms applied to two experimental datasets show that they bring an improvement close to theoretical expectations. Port starboard discrimination and the successful combination of IBF with ETAM make this approach innovative. In Chapter 3, methods for improving the localisation of a source with a short towed array are analysed and applied to data, both simulated and measured at sea. Localisation performance with sonar towed array is related to the array length. The knowledge of the position of a given acoustic source gives a critical tactical advantage to a ship. There are a limited number of ways to estimate the range of a source with a towed passive sonar, most requiring the towing platform to execute a manoeuvre. These manoeuvres are undesirable as they take a lot of time, cause bending of the towed array and can even put the towing platform in harm’s way. We present a number of source position estimation methods for both broadband and narrowband sources suitable for short towed arrays. Recursive methods based on the extended Kalman filter are first examined. A new method based on the integration of time delay of arrival measurements along the sonar path is described. We derive theoretical performance indicators and show that this method gives the possibility to estimate the position and speed of a source without a manoeuvre. In Chapter 4, the Classification performance of a broadband waveform is analysed and measured on data collected at sea. Like any long-range active sonar system, LFAS produces a large amount of unwanted sea bottom echoes or clutter. These echoes give rise to false alarms that increase the computational load of target trackers and jeopardise the correct classification of each echo. The number of false alarms due to clutter can be reduced either through echo classification techniques or through Doppler filtering provided the targets of interest are in motion. Much research has been carried out on waveform investigation for the efficient use of bandwidth capabilities of modern sonar transmitters. Among the quantity of waveforms, Binary Phase Shift Keyed (BPSK) pulses have emerged as exhibiting cross-correlation properties relevant to Doppler filtering while maintaining a range resolution comparable to Frequency Modulated (FM) pulses. We have successfully applied a false alarm reduction technique using contacts obtained with an FM pulse subsequently processed by Doppler filtering with a BPSK pulse. The Doppler classification performance for this pulse is evaluated on an experimental dataset and a few limitations of BPSK are identified.Aircraft Transport and OperationAerospace Engineerin
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
An Improved Processing Chain for Matched Field Tracking
No full textMatched Field Processing (MFP) for range/depth source localisation has been applied successfully to vertical arrays of hydrophones for more than 10 years. However, these arrays are awkward to deploy. On the other hand, horizontal towed arrays offer little or no vertical aperture, making range and depth localisation an inspiring challenge. This shortcoming, combined with the frequent problem of environmental mismatch and hostile conditions of shallow water (increased noise levels and interfering sources) results in severe degradation of the MFP ambiguity surfaces, thus preventing source localisation. This paper reports on our research effort for the application of MFP to short towed arrays (32λ at 2kHz). A realistic scenario has been simulated, involving a target source and additional interfering noise sources. A normal mode model is used for the modelling, and environmental mismatch is introduced. Inverse beamforming is used to remove the interfering sources at hydrophone level, prior to MFP. A multiple target tracker is then used to distinguish sidelobes from actual target detections over a series of snapshots. Application of this method on simulated data shows encouraging results
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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