A Portable Tactical Field Sensor Array for an Infrasound Direction-Finding and Positioning System

John P. McIntire, Duy K. Nguyen, Eric T. Vinande, and Frederick C. Webber

Abstract:	Infrasound refers to sound frequencies below the threshold of human hearing, around 20 Hz or less. There are a variety of natural sources of infrasonic emissions, including thunderstorms, avalanches, meteors, earthquakes, volcanos, windstorms, etc.; as well as man-made sources of emissions, such as aircraft, heavy machinery, artillery, missile testing, road traffic, etc. Infrasound is especially attractive from a sensing perspective due to its ability to propagate long distances while suffering little from atmospheric or environmental attenuation. In this work, we describe the development of a man-portable “tactical” infrasound field sensor array that is small, lightweight, and can be rapidly set-up and torn-down as needed. The system is able to provide direction-finding capabilities to infrasound impulse sources with a directional accuracy of +/- 3 degrees. Such information could be used for alternative positioning schemes, as will be described in detail, or perhaps for direction-finding (homing) to acoustic sources of interest. Possible users could be military or search-and-rescue teams operating in GPS-denied environments; field researchers studying volcanology or seismology; or other geo-acoustic scientists and engineers.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 2017 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 30 - 2, 2017 Hyatt Regency Monterey Monterey, California
Pages:	1057 - 1066
Cite this article:	McIntire, John P., Nguyen, Duy K., Vinande, Eric T., Webber, Frederick C., "A Portable Tactical Field Sensor Array for an Infrasound Direction-Finding and Positioning System," Proceedings of the 2017 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, Monterey, California, January 2017, pp. 1057-1066. https://doi.org/10.33012/2017.14968
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