Fault Detection and Prognostic Health monitoring of Towed array sonars

Abstract

Sonars are used to detect underwater targets and are especially important in maintaining naval superiority. Towed array sonars can operate at very low frequencies thus giving larger ranges and can be deployed to any desired depth of operation. Towed array sonars offer long range surveillance capability and is the sensor of choice for sustained surveillance operations. Reliable operation and maintenance of towed array sonars need effective methods of health monitoring and reliability prediction. For any prognostic health monitoring to be done we need to identify certain parameters which can be observed and will give system health status in the present condition. This paper proposes some metrics which are easily measurable in-situ and which offer insights into the health of the sonar system. These metrics give direct measureable impact for each of the failure modes and offer insights into the current health of an operational towed array sonar. Simulation results are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed metrics and detailed trial data results from different towed array trials are analysed to validate them in operational scenarios.