15. 1 Small Business Innovation Research (sbir) Proposal Submission Instructions Revised Closing Date: February 25, 2015, at 6: 00 a m. Et
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| PHASE II: Based on the results of Phase I and the Phase II contract statement of work the company will develop a prototype for evaluation. The prototype will be evaluated to determine its capability in meeting the Navy’s requirements for the automated State Estimation capability as described above. System performance will be demonstrated through prototype evaluation and modeling or analytical methods over the required range of parameters. Evaluation results will be used to refine the prototype into a design that will meet Navy requirements. The company will prepare a Phase III development plan to transition the technology to Navy use. Phase II has the potential to be classified.
PHASE III: The company will be expected to support the Navy in transitioning the technology for Navy use. The company will develop an automated State Estimation capability according to the Phase III development plan for evaluation to determine its effectiveness in an operationally relevant environment. The company will support the Navy for test and validation to certify and qualify the system for Navy use. PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: Technology developed under this effort could be of benefit to other areas significantly affected by environmental characteristics such as Active Sonar, Over-the-Horizon-Radar, Urban GPS, and similar operating environments. REFERENCES: 1. Dosso, Stan; “Environmental Uncertainty in Ocean Acoustic Source Localization” Inverse Problems, vol. 19, num. 2, pg. 419, 2003. 2. Jensen, Finn; et al.; Computational Ocean Acoustics AIP Press 1994. 3. Stone, Lawrence; et al., Bayesian Multiple Target Tracking Second Edition, Artech House, 2014. 4. Ristic, Branko; et al., Beyond the Kalman Filter: Particle Filters for Tracking Applications. Artech House, 2004. 5. Edited by, Van Trees, Harry and Bell, Kristine, Bayesian Bounds for Parameter Estimation and Nonlinear Fitering/Tracking, Wiley Interscience, 2007. KEYWORDS: Submarine acoustic sensors; acoustic environment; exploiting environmental information; target localization; state estimation; automated tracking N151-034 TITLE: Active Signal Processing Enhancements for Classification of Low Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) Sonar Signals in Doppler Clutter TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Sensors, Electronics, Battlespace ACQUISITION PROGRAM: PEO IWS 5.0, Undersea Warfare Systems The technology within this topic is restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), 22 CFR Parts 120-130, which controls the export and import of defense-related material and services, including export of sensitive technical data, or the Export Administration Regulation (EAR), 15 CFR Parts 730-774, which controls dual use items. Offerors must disclose any proposed use of foreign nationals (FNs), their country(ies) of origin, the type of visa or work permit possessed, and the statement of work (SOW) tasks intended for accomplishment by the FN(s) in accordance with section 5.4.c.(8) of the solicitation. Offerors are advised foreign nationals proposed to perform on this topic may be restricted due to the technical data under US Export Control Laws. OBJECTIVE: Develop innovative signal processing algorithms for Doppler sensitive waveform processing that improve detection and classification. DESCRIPTION: The Navy is seeking to develop signal and information processing for improved performance of Doppler processing in the presence of stationary clutter, ownship induced clutter, and active interference. Innovative signal and information processing algorithms are sought to improve overall performance for Continuous Wave (CW) pulsed waveform processing. Of particular interest are low Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) signals near the clutter ridge. These approaches should seek to improve the probability of detection and classification, while decreasing false alert rate and operator workload. Approaches might include signal processing techniques such as beamforming or statistical signal processing [ref 3], mismatch filtering approaches [ref 4], and others. Information processing improvements may include feature extraction and processing, multi-target tracking, and operator tools and displays. Mid-frequency pulsed active sonar (MF PAS) systems exploit the Doppler sensitivity of certain waveforms (for example narrowband CW pulses) to aid in detection and classification of submarine and torpedo targets. Spectrogram processing of beam time series data of CW pulses isolates stationary clutter (such as bottom clutter and volume reverberation) to frequency bins near zero Doppler offset. This results in the familiar zero Doppler clutter ridge. In theory, signal echoes with sufficient Doppler can be detected and classified with high confidence provided there is adequate frequency separation from the clutter ridge. In practice, the range-Doppler surface is cluttered by much more than stationary clutter. Own-ship motion leads to a spectral spreading of bottom reverberation, resulting in “shoulders” of elevated noise surrounding the clutter ridge [refs 1, 2]. This suppresses or masks weak contacts even when there is separation from the clutter ridge. Active interference from nearby transmitters appears as discrete broadband impulses in the processing band of interest. These and other sources of spectral splatter adversely affect detection, tracking, and classification capabilities. Adaptive beamformers have been used to reject interference and narrow the frequency extent of the clutter ridge, but are still subject to degraded performance in regions dominated by own-ship motion induced reverberation. PHASE I: The company will develop signal and information processing concepts for improved performance of Doppler processing in the presence of stationary clutter, own-ship induced clutter, and active interference. The company will demonstrate the feasibility of the concepts in meeting Navy needs and show the feasibility of developing the concepts into useful products for the Navy. Analytical modeling and simulation may be used to demonstrate feasibility. Based on the results of the analysis, the company will determine which concept best meets Navy needs. PHASE II: Based on the results of Phase I and the Phase II contract statement of work, the small business will develop prototype signal and information processes for evaluation as needed. The prototype will be evaluated to determine its capability in meeting Navy requirements for Mid-frequency active clutter reduction using selected government furnished information (GFI) data sets. Sensor performance will be demonstrated through comparison of results from the prototype methods to current system methods over the required range of parameters. Evaluation results will be used to refine the prototype into a design that will meet Navy requirements. The company will prepare a Phase III development plan to transition the technology to Navy use. It is likely that the Phase II work will require access to classified data. PHASE III: If Phase II is successful, the company will be expected to provide support to the Navy in transitioning the technology for Navy use. The company will develop real-time computer code that implements the signal and information processing methods and associated computer integration code for evaluation to determine its effectiveness in an operationally relevant environment. The company will assist in integrating and testing the software in a real-time environment, or other advanced processor build program specified by the US Navy. The company will support the Navy in test and validation to certify and qualify the system for Navy use. PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: Techniques to enhance detection and classification performance in reverberation dominated regions can provide improvement for many commercial applications of active sonar. Bathymetry mapping, fish finding, oil exploration, commercial salvage and rescue/recovery efforts all use active sonar in regions/environments subject to reverberation and interference. REFERENCES: 1. Cox, H., "Space-time processing for suppression of bottom reverberation," Signals, Systems and Computers, 1995. 1995 Conference Record of the Twenty-Ninth Asilomar Conference on, vol.2, pp.1296,1299 vol.2, Oct. 30 1995-Nov. 1 1995. 2. R. Urick, Principles of Underwater Sound, 3rd Edition. Los Altos Hills, CA: Peninsula Publishing, 1983. 3. D. Manolakis, V. Ingle, and S. Kogon, Statistical and Adaptive Signal Processing. Norwood, MA: Artech House, Inc, 2005. 4. Kesler, S.B.; Haykin, S., "Mismatched Filtering of Sonar Signals," Aerospace and Electronic Systems, IEEE Transactions on the equipment, procedures, and techniques applicable to the organization, installation, and operation of functional systems designed to meet the high performance requirements of earth and space systems. vol.AES-17, no.5, pp.730,734, Sept. 1981. KEYWORDS: Active sonar; underwater acoustics; clutter reduction in SNR signals; sonar signal processing; low doppler detection; signal processing techniques for sonar N151-035 TITLE: Organic Submarine Multi-Sensor Fusion TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Sensors, Electronics, Battlespace ACQUISITION PROGRAM: PEO IWS 5, Undersea Warfare Systems The technology within this topic is restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), 22 CFR Parts 120-130, which controls the export and import of defense-related material and services, including export of sensitive technical data, or the Export Administration Regulation (EAR), 15 CFR Parts 730-774, which controls dual use items. Offerors must disclose any proposed use of foreign nationals (FNs), their country(ies) of origin, the type of visa or work permit possessed, and the statement of work (SOW) tasks intended for accomplishment by the FN(s) in accordance with section 5.4.c.(8) of the solicitation. Offerors are advised foreign nationals proposed to perform on this topic may be restricted due to the technical data under US Export Control Laws. OBJECTIVE: Develop an automated organic submarine multi-sensor data fusion capability for submarine sensor systems that meets submarine tactical group requirements. DESCRIPTION: Submarine combat systems require manual processes and procedures to assimilate information gathered by physical sensors into a tactical picture. The tactical picture is used by a submarine’s command team and crew to understand and respond to the operating environment. To generate the tactical picture, the submarine crew evaluates contact or track information across sensor classes for a number of factors related to similarities in kinematic and spectral properties. If properties across tracks are sufficiently correlated, contacts are "fused". This process provides more information for tactical level tracking to improve the track and reduce the number of contacts improving situational clarity and enabling the Submarine’s command team and crew to understand and respond to the operating environment more effectively. Fully automated systems exist in a variety of DoD, DHS, and commercial systems. Radar systems are such an example. However, providing a unified tactical picture through sensors with weak range resolution, in contact rich environments while searching for weak and elusive targets, remains a difficult problem. Submarine sonar systems are an example of this. Providing a solution to this remains a difficult problem. This topic pursues a software subsystem that would interact with the tactical system of a submarine to fully automate data fusion techniques to produce a tactical picture through association of contact information across multiple sensors, both acoustic and non-acoustic [ref 1]. Although automated association of all contacts all of the time is extremely difficult, if not impossible, there are many cases where sufficient information is available to produce high confidence associations and to improve the command teams understanding of a contact’s position and velocity. For example, existence of strong narrowband content across spectrally overlapped acoustic sensors is useful to initiate and maintain association of two independent sensor level tracks for the purposes of generating a single composite fused contact. The small business will need to develop a collection of physics-based techniques operating within a probabilistic framework designed to exploit contact features across both similar and dissimilar sensing systems [ref 2] and innovations on what data can be fused reliably. For example, it should be clear that acoustic data from an array of towed hydrophones is unlikely to share any spectral information with optical data from the periscope; however, environmental effects may encode closing geometry characteristics in both the acoustic and optical data. Also, for example, raw spectral information from a towed sensor may not permit a direct signature level correlation with a hull-mounted sensor due to separation in the operating spectra; however, known engine characteristics may allow the determination that these different separate spectral bands hold narrow band components of a common mechanical origin. The approach to interface with the hosting Tactical Control System should be best suited to the proposed data fusing concept(s) and should provide salient metrics to measure and monitor in-situ. Like few other platforms, the submarine is vitally dependent on its sensors during periods of total submersion. Collecting, associating, and assimilating acoustic data to generate the tactical and operational picture is the highest priority. Means to use non-acoustic sensor data to compare and fuse acoustic evidence is desired for periods when the submarine is at periscope depth; however, this is a secondary consideration. Of great importance to any concept transitioning to operational use will be a means to provide confidence to the command team and crew that the automated systems are working correctly and accurately. A critical factor for success is then a demonstrable means for the concept to provide transparency to the operator on all facets of the data collection, association, and assimilation. In addition to this transparency, a means to “self-regulate” is of equal importance. We define self-regulation as the property of the system to assess inputs and accurately characterize its fused contact output in terms of uncertainty or confidence. Empirical and analytic techniques for this self-assessment are well known [refs 3, 4]. A successful concept must then self-regulate to report when operational thresholds for confidence are not satisfactory to remain under automated contact fusion. Effective approaches will provide a means for rapid and effective operator interaction with the system to act when manual attention is required. PHASE I: The company will develop a concept for an organic submarine multi-sensor data fusion capability that meets the stated requirements in the description section. The company will demonstrate the feasibility of the concept in meeting Navy needs and will establish that the concept can be feasibly developed into a useful product for the Navy. Simulated testing and analytical modeling will establish feasibility. PHASE II: Based on the results of Phase I and the Phase II contract statement of work, the company will develop a prototype for evaluation. The prototype will be evaluated to determine its capability in meeting Navy requirements for the organic submarine multi-sensor data fusion capability. System performance will be demonstrated through prototype evaluation and modeling or analytical methods over the required range of parameters including but not limited to its ability to fuse data from multiple acoustic and non-acoustic sensors into correlated contacts, operate autonomously to provide a tactical picture of fused data contacts, interface with existing submarine Tactical Control Systems, provide salient metrics to measure and monitor contacts in-situ, and provide a means to determine/report confidence level of the automated data fusing contact reporting. Evaluation results will be used to refine the prototype into a design that will meet Navy requirements. The company will prepare a Phase III development plan to transition the technology to Navy use. Phase II has the potential to be classified. PHASE III: The company will be expected to support the Navy in transitioning the technology for Navy use. The company will develop an organic submarine multi-sensor data fusion capability according to the Phase III development plan for evaluation to determine its effectiveness in an operationally relevant environment. The company will support the Navy for test and validation to certify and qualify the system for Navy use. PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: Technology developed under this effort could be of benefit to areas such as persistent surveillance and homeland defense, where significant diversity of data types and minimal geometric perspective sensors makes finding and exploiting spectral and kinematic feature information difficult. REFERENCES: 1. Liggins, Martin; et al., Handbook of Multisensor Data Fusion: Theory and Practice, Second Addition CRC Press 2008. 2. Stone, Lawrence; et al., Bayesian Multiple Target Tracking Second Edition, Artech House, 2014. 3. Ristic, Branko; et al., Beyond the Kalman Filter: Particle Filters for Tracking Applications. Artech House, 2004. 4. Edited by, Van Trees, Harry and Bell, Kristine, Bayesian Bounds for Parameter Estimation and Nonlinear Filtering/Tracking, Wiley Interscience, 2007. KEYWORDS: Submarine combat systems; automated data fusion; assimilating acoustic data; automated association of contacts; acoustic sensors; non-acoustic sensors N151-036 TITLE: Next Generation Electronic Warfare Human Machine Interface (HMI) for Submarines TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Ground/Sea Vehicles ACQUISITION PROGRAM: PMS-435, Submarine Imaging and EW Systems The technology within this topic is restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), 22 CFR Parts 120-130, which controls the export and import of defense-related material and services, including export of sensitive technical data, or the Export Administration Regulation (EAR), 15 CFR Parts 730-774, which controls dual use items. Offerors must disclose any proposed use of foreign nationals (FNs), their country(ies) of origin, the type of visa or work permit possessed, and the statement of work (SOW) tasks intended for accomplishment by the FN(s) in accordance with section 5.4.c.(8) of the solicitation. Offerors are advised foreign nationals proposed to perform on this topic may be restricted due to the technical data under US Export Control Laws. OBJECTIVE: To develop an intuitive, responsive, and open Human Machine Interface (HMI) system for Submarine Electronic Warfare (EW) AN/BLQ-10B (V) for increased operator efficiency and decision-making for submarine operators. DESCRIPTION: The Navy seeks an innovative approach to improve machine-to-operator interfaces in both traditional and innovative displays for operator interaction with data and system functions to provide the most comprehensive and intuitive controls and displays for operator use. This system should provide easy integration with new applications and features to increase operator functionality without increasing the operator/system interaction. The system must be modular and easily extensible to allow for future growth as the AN/BLQ-10 adds or improves functionality and data sources. The purpose of HMIs are to allow the EW operator to intuitively interact with the Radio frequency (RF) environment and reduce the operators’ manual interaction with the system while significantly improving emission classification and correlation (ref 2). While the current submarine operational environment becomes increasingly complex and dense, the AN/BLQ-10 (submarine EW system) operator would be capable of providing accurate and timely information to the control room decision-makers for improved situational awareness. With the current submarine EW system becoming increasingly complex (coupled with a denser more complex electromagnetic operational environment), operators will need to have faster interaction with the system in ways that are more intuitive, and accurately show the electromagnetic environment allowing quicker data processing for decision-making and increased operator mission performance (ref 3). The challenge for the EW operator is to provide the control room decision-makers with timely, relevant, and accurate reports to improve situational awareness. The solution should also focus on improved operational performance, effectiveness and operator workload reduction. These HMI modules must be able to consume and display organic (data collected from on board sensors) and inorganic (data that originates from off board sensors) data sets of varying types. Data sets can range from processed answers (sonar solutions, ESM emitter reports) to raw digital sets (Pulse Descriptor Words (PDW’s), continuous digital intermediate frequency (IF) (CDIF), burst digital IF (BDIF), or In-phase / Quadrature (I/Q) data). These displays can range from processed near real time (NRT) data to real time (RT) data displays (ref 1,4). During Phase I unclassified data sets of similar complexity and content to actual data will be utilized. During Phase II it is anticipated that work will require access to actual classified data sets and if necessary and available actual system access to for Submarine Electronic Warfare (EW) AN/BLQ-10B (V) may be provided. PHASE I: The company will develop concepts for a Next Generation EW HMI for Submarines that meet the requirements as stated in the description section. At the completion of Phase I, determine technical feasibility, identify hardware and software architecture concepts with tradeoffs as well as system technical characteristics, and provide a cost analysis of the design. Develop and demonstrate design of key technology components. Establish Phase II performance goals (gradable metrics) and key developmental milestones. PHASE II: Based on the results of Phase I and the Phase II contract statement of work, the company will develop a scaled prototype for evaluation. In the early part of Phase II, the performer will work with the government representatives to develop a test plan for prototype demonstrations in Phase II. The prototype will be evaluated to determine its capability in meeting Navy requirements for a Next Generation EW HMI for Submarines. System performance will be demonstrated through prototype evaluation and modeling or analytical methods over the required range of parameters, including various data sets and numerous deployment cycles. Evaluation results will be used to refine the prototype into a design that will meet Navy requirements. The company will prepare a Phase III development plan that will provide a detailed plan and method of implementation to a full scale system and what is required to transition the technology to Navy use. PHASE III: If Phase II is successful, the company will be expected to support the Navy in transitioning the technology for Navy use. The company will develop a Next Generation EW HMI for submarines to determine its effectiveness in an operationally relevant environment. The company will support the Navy for test and validation to certify and qualify the system for Navy use. PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: Government commercialization should be applicable across all EW platforms in the Navy. There is potential for other service / agency signals intelligence (SIGINT) systems to utilize these improved HMIs (Combat Sent, Rivet Joint, Global Hawk Ground Station, etc.). Commercial applicability could be used in the telecommunications (TELCOM) and Information Technology industries, and specifically with any RF mapping technologies, emitter detection and classification displays, etc. REFERENCES: 1. Fundamentals of Statistical Signal Processing, Vol. 1; PrenticeHall, Steven M. Kay, 1993. |