A Sensing and Tracking Algorithm for Multiple Frequency Line Components in Underwater Acoustic Signals

Reliable and efficient sensing and tracking of multiple weak or time-varying frequency line components in underwater acoustic signals is the topic of this paper. We propose a method for automatic detection and tracking of multiple frequency lines in lofargram based on hidden Markov model (HMM). Instead of being directly subjected to frequency line tracking, the whole lofargram is first segmented into several sub-lofargrams. Then, the sub-lofargrams suspected to contain frequency lines are screened. In these sub-lofargrams, the HMM-based method is used for detection of multiple frequency lines. Using image stitching and statistical model method, the frequency lines with overlapping parts detected by different sub-lofargrams are merged to obtain the final detection results. The method can effectively detect multiple time-varying frequency lines of underwater acoustic signals while ensuring the performance under the condition of low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). It can be concluded that the proposed algorithm can provide better multiple frequency lines sensing ability while greatly reducing the amount of calculations and providing potential techniques for feature sensing and tracking processing of unattended equipment such as sonar buoys and submerged buoys.