Experimental setup for underwater artifact identification and signal analysis using wavelets

The identification of seabed archaeological objects has become of great importance in the last decades. However, often times identifying and retrieving archeological artifacts is an expensive venture. There is a need to develop economical equipment and efficient signal processing techniques to identify and retrieve underwater artifacts. Current signal processing techniques are quite complex. The purpose of this paper is to first propose a test bed for conducting underwater experiments that can be used in a number of applications such as object identification. The experimental setup uses ultrasound waves. Wavelets are used to de-noise and analyze the ultrasound signals reflected from seabed objects. Results show that the test bed can be easily used to simulate various seabed environments. Experimental results show that wavelets are an effective tool for signal de-noising and identification purposes.