Timmermann, Johannes

From a strategic point of view, it is essential to protect underwater vehicles from being detected by opponents. Modern mono- or bistatic sonar systems are capable of precisely determining the position of a watercraft. In order to triangulate the positions of watercrafts, the sonar sends out acoustic signals that are reflected by the vehicles’ surfaces. These deflected sound waves are subsequently detected and evaluated. How well an object can be detected using a sonar can be measured according to the target strength. Through their shape, construction and choice of materials, modern underwater vehicles are optimized in relation to minimizing their radiated and reflected sound waves; in this way, their target strength is minimized. These passive measures are particularly effective in the medium- and high-frequency range down to 1500 Hz. To effectively reduce reflections at lower frequencies, an active system is developed in this study and evaluated in a laboratory test with a water-filled impedance tube. The incident sound waves were measured in front of an active surface and then processed using an adaptive control system based on an FPGA platform. The system operates with a very thin piezoceramic applied to the surface in order to minimize the reflections of the sound waves. The laboratory tests showed the high effectiveness of the system under the influence of sonar-like signals.

Moderne Sonarsysteme sind in der Lage, die Position von Wasserfahrzeugen zu bestimmen. Ein aktives Sonarsystem sendet Schallwellen aus, die an Oberflächen reflektieren und wieder detektiert werden. Durch die Auswertung der reflektierten Signale lässt sich die Position von Fahrzeugen ermitteln. Um schwerer oder gar nicht detektiert werden zu können, muss die Reflexion an der Oberfläche des Fahrzeuges minimiert werden. In dieser Studie wird der Reflexionsfaktor am Übergang von Wasser zu Stahl reduziert. In einem mit Wasser gefüllten Impedanzrohr werden Drucksensoren und eine aktive Beschichtung implementiert. Die Beschichtung besteht aus einer dünnen Piezokeramik, die in einen Kunststoff eingebettet ist. Die Ansteuerung des Piezoaktors erfolgt zunächst durch manuelle Eingabe und anschließend durch einen Regler. Der Regler basiert auf einer Wellentrennung und einem digitalen adaptiven Filter. Der Nachweis der Funktionstüchtigkeit des neuen Systems erfolgt für stationären tonalen Schall im Impedanzrohr.

The most used algorithm in active noise control (ANC) applications is the filtered-x least mean square (FxLMS). For large scale systems with multiple inputs and outputs the computational demand of the FxLMS is rising rapidly. Conventional solutions, running on digital signal processors (DSPs), have limitations in parallel computing. In this work a parameterizable multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) feedback FxLMS architecture for field-programmable gate array (FPGA) platforms is presented that can easily be optimized for high-performance or resource efficient computation. The implementation is validated in a real-time practical application using an active headrest with 2 x 2 channels. The noise reduction is evaluated over various configurations with increasing performance and the respective synthesis results are presented. Here the noise reduction does benefit from the additional computational performance gains. An additional configuration with 11 x 11 channels and filter lengths of 2049 at a sample rate of 40 kHz is shown as a benchmark on high-end FPGAs.