The University of Auckland

Project #95: Underwater ultrasonic beamforming optimisation

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Description:

The students will join a PhD student and help in a bathymetry project. The bathymetry project consists of developing a steerable sonar for underwater acoustic ranging. The overall goal of this project is to develop a fully automated sonar that compensates pitch and roll on a moving boat subject to waves. This compensation will insure that the sonar beam always points straight downwards to measure depth.

Developing a mechanical compensation as gimbals is possible but optimised since 3-dimensional steering taking advantages of constructive and destructive interference of sound waves is much easier to develop than underwater moving parts. The students will pick up the work that has been done by part IV students in 2019 and did a considerable amount of work on the hardware which is finished. The software, on the other hand, could use some optimisation.

The work of the students will be both on Matlab interface (original work with Matlab but could be transformed to a python interface if desired) and the acoustic signal generation on a C-based microcontroller (PSoC5LP).

All the hardware for the sonar beams is ready to be used right away, and its use has been made simple by the serious work of the previous students. The students tacking the project this year will have to use a computer with Matlab or python for the GUI and PSoC Creator to use the PSoC development board.

Type:

Undergraduate

Outcome:

Software and some hardware gadgets to make device uable in the field. 

Prerequisites

none

Specialisations

Categories

Supervisor

Co-supervisor

Team

Lab

Lab allocations have not been finalised