Modular Digital Hydrophone Array

Defence Research Establishment Atlantic (DREA) has developed a linear hydrophone array for studying sound propagation in shallow water. The array consists of in-line hydrophones, with electronics connected by robust and interchangeable cable sections, making changes in array geometry easy to implement. These cable sections form a digital bus, controlled at one end by a microprocessor, which in turn is controlled via radio link by a shipboard computer. Through this system, many array characteristics including gain, bandpass, sampling rate and element activity are easily changed by the operator. The maximum hydrophone separation is one kilometer, and the frequency response covers one Hertz to three kiloHertz. The array is easy to handle, since with the exception of floats and weights, it is deployed, recovered and stored on a winch. The array has been successfully used in a number of different configurations, and its flexibility adequately demonstrated.