PROJECTS
Broadband High-Frequency Active Sonar
The US Navy's Compact Low Frequency Active (CLFA) system uses very powerful low frequency acoustic signals and dual towed arrays to search for quiet submerged platforms. These powerful signals can adversely affect nearby marine mammals and other living creatures.
Extreme Sonar is working as a subcontractor to In-Depth Engineering, tasked with delivering a high-frequency active transducer that will allow detection, classification and localization of nearby marine organisms at ranges of up to 2 km or more. This device will be used to shut down the CLFA projector when marine mammals are detected nearby during peacetime exercises.
Wideband Directional Acoustic Intercept Sonar
Surface and submerged platforms generate noise which can be detected, classified, and localized by wideband acoustic receivers at tactically useful distances to improve situational awareness. The system's multiple receivers will also passively detect, classify and localize nearby submerged contacts.
Extreme Sonar provides wideband (1 kHz to 470 kHz) acoustic receivers with the lowest electronic noise levels in the industry, as low as 0.6 nV per root Hz. Extreme Sonar also provides assistance in designing wideband baffles, and can provide covariance based cancellation to reduce noise from nearfield sources, e.g. propulsion noise on an AUV.
Broadband Ultrasonic Antifouling System
Any objects spending enough time in a seawater environment will eventually be covered with biofouling organisms. Extreme Sonar has developed a low-cost wideband technique for using ultrasonics to prevent biofouling, while keeping the radiated noise at environmentally friendly levels. Unlike most other Ultrasonic Antifouling Systems which use transducers mounted to the inner hull, Extreme Sonar's system sends ultrasonic energy through the water providing higher efficiency and better coverage.
High-Efficiency Broadband Power Amplifier
Submerged platforms can sometimes escape detection from threatening sonars and acoustic homing weapons by deployment of loud acoustic noisemakers. Because sonar transducers are normally only efficient over a narrow frequency band, a large number of transducers and associated power amplifiers and waveform generators are generally required to cover the relevant frequency band.
Extreme Sonar has developed a novel technique for exploiting high-order transducer modalities to allow efficient transduction over a very wide frequency band using a low cost flexural transducer. This technique allows generation of noise or a coded signal over a frequency band spanning from less than a kHz to over 300 kHz with a 6dB per octave falloff.