Extraction of small boat harmonic signatures from passive sonar

This paper investigates the extraction of acoustic signatures from small boats using a passive sonar system. Noise radiated from a small boats consists of broadband noise and harmonically related tones that correspond to engine and propeller specifications. A signal processing method to automatically extract the harmonic structure of noise radiated from small boats is developed. The Harmonic Extraction and Analysis Tool (HEAT) estimates the instantaneous fundamental frequency of the harmonic tones, refines the fundamental frequency estimate using a Kalman filter, and automatically extracts the amplitudes of the harmonic tonals to generate a harmonic signature for the boat. Results are presented that show the HEAT algorithms ability to extract these signatures.