Sonar Systems

DUNE has a deep experience in designing and developing hard real-time systems for underwater purposes where flexible multi-processor architectures are needed to process high-rate data and to guarantee the system reliability and the failure run-time management.

Our company has developed the data and signal processing sections of several passive and active sonar designed for underwater surveillance and discovery, research and tracking of targets.

The entire project documentation, according to the ISO 9001:2015 and NATO Standard AQAP-150, is integrated to the system delivery.

The system is a bow mounted, lightweight active sonar for surface ship designed to detect and localize moored mines and submerged moving or stationary small objects and to assist the navigation in both deep and shallow waters.

DUNE has developed the Data and Signal processing section of the transmitting and receiving Unit (A/D and D/A conversion, digital beamforming in RX, digital signal and data processing, inverse beamforming for signal generation), the Host management section and the Console Unit Graphic Software (sonar raw-data display format, synthetic data presentation for tracked object, readout information, management for the input data/command).

The system has been realized on a VME rack equipped with 1 Radstone PPC board (O.S. VsxWorks) , A/D and D/A boards and 4 Mercury PPC boards with 4 processors each. The real-time architecture has been designed, simulated, optimized and realized using a cluster of 12 processors operating with parallel and serial scheduling.

The system is a passive and active sonar operating in underwater environments designed to survey and detect moving or stationary objects in a port area.

DUNE has developed the Data and Signal processing section (A/D and D/A conversion, digital beamforming in RX, digital signal and data processing), the Host section and the Console Unit Graphic Software (sonar raw-data display format, synthetic data presentation for tracked object, readout information, management for the input data/command).

The system has been realized on a VME rack equipped with 1 Radstone PPC board (O.S. VsxWorks) , A/D and D/A boards and 4 Mercury PPC boards with 4 processors each. The real-time architecture has been designed, simulated, optimized and realized using a cluster of 10 processors operating with parallel and serial scheduling.

The system simulates the signals/waveforms (CW, linear FM, colored noise) emitted from multiple simultaneous targets and received by a two dimensional acoustic array equipped with several tens of transducers. An external user can command position changes via serial synchronous interface with a maximum reaction time of 5 ms while generated output signals are transferred via optical fiber (HotLink).

The system includes a Bittware board (2 HHPC, 2 PMC, 16 DSP Hammerhead) and a HW board designed and developed by DUNE to pre-condition and optoinsulate control signals.

The system has been designed for identification, classification and localization of underwater acoustic sources for surveillance and tracking purposes.

DUNE has designed and developed a real-time processing architecture (design, simulation, optimization and coding of processing algorithms, architecture and processors control, interface management, testing and integration) on a VME rack including 1 Motorola PPC board and several Mercury PPC boards with 4 processors each.

The system is an active and passive acoustic head for modern torpedoes operating at medium and high frequency and having spatial and frequency filtering and multi-frequency capabilities.

DUNE has developed the Signal Processing section.

The system has been realized with 3 Radstone boards (VANTEGRA-DL). The real-time processing (beamforming, CW and FM signal generation, detection, FM signal compression, Demon and Classification algorithms) has been designed, simulated, optimized and realized on a cluster of 36 DSP Sharc processors.

The system migration and upgrading on a new environment including 1 Thales board (2 PPC processors) and 1 Mango board equipped with Hammerhead DSP has been also performed.

The system is a light weight torpedo conceived to operate in various mission areas with multi-frequency, parallel processing, simultaneous acoustic modes operation and multi-target tracking capabilities.

DUNE has developed the Signal Processing section on a VME rack equipped with 1 Radstone PPC board (O.S. VsxWorks) , A/D and D/A boards and several Mercury PPC boards with 4 processor each.