RUNNING HEAD: DEVELOPMENT OF A SONAR SYSTEM TO ASSIST NAVIGATION

Development of a Sonar System to Assist Firefighter Navigation in Low-Visibility High

Temperature Environments

Sidney Boakye, Michelle Miller, Joaquin Valda

September 20, 2017

Dr. Ales Psaker

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Abstract

Firefighters have to enter and navigate unknown buildings on a daily basis. Most times,

they are not familiar with their surroundings or the layout of the building which is a problem in

itself. On top of that, they have to grapple with reduced visibility due to the smoke and gases

that are produced by fires. With reduced visibility, the risks these men and women face grow

exponentially. Although there are devices already on the market that help firefighters navigate

obstructed surroundings, none of them fully solve the problem. The device which could help in

this situation would be a sonar. However, sonar systems on the market today are are unable to

adequately penetrate flames.

This article discusses the use of pulse compression sonar to map out low visibility

hazardous environments. A prototype sonar that implements this pulse-compression method was

developed to test this thesis. Numerous experiments were conducted to further understand and

analyze this method of sonar. Eventually, this sonar system was able to detect objects through a

flame.

This sonar system can be applied in many situations and will be especially useful to the

military as well as in instances where personnel have to navigate obscured environments.

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Materials and Methods

A sonar prototype was made with a computer, National Instruments cDAQ

9178 chassis, a National Instruments 9215 Analog Input Module, and a National Instruments

9263 Analog Output Module. The National Instruments devices were used in the data collection,

which was controlled by the MATLAB and DAT. An acoustic signal was made by the PC, DAQ,

and projector. The source and the microphone were connected, making the sonar monostatic. The

source travels away and reflects into the microphone, which is then analyzed and used to

calculate the time of flight. The microphones used were an omnidirectional instrumentation

microphone, a condenser microphone, and a sensor signal conditioner. A propane burner was put

in the path of the the sonar to test how the fire affected the sonar signal.The amount of heat used

for the fire was 43 kW so that the radiation does not damage the source.
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Figure 1. This is the schematic for the monostatic sonar experiment.

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Analysis

Just as it was expressed in the abstract the main goal of this project was accomplished. A

sonar system which could penetrate flames was developed. Nine sets of experiments were tested

which all had varying design implications and independent variables. A commonality found

between all of the experiments was that having a higher frequency and directionality would

allow for better reading to come through, yet these were always highly directionalized. Lower

frequencies had much better range but garnered horrid detectivity. This issue was later overcome

by using larger frequency ranges and post-processing. That allowed the better parts of both

frequencies to be observed in one attempt of the experiment. When calculating for error later on,

it was unsurprisingly discovered that fire size was the biggest contributor to error. This is

hypothesized to have been for multiple reasons: flame turbulence, higher temperature, and even

higher frequencies all gave larger amounts of error.

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Figure 2. A sonar processing is depicted above. Figure 2a and 2b are cross correlated to calculate

delay. Figure 2cs envelope is found but taking the absolute value of Figure 2d.

References
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Abbasi, M. Z. (2013, May 01). Development of a sonar system to assist firefighter navigation in

low-visibility high temperature environments. Retrieved September 20, 2017, from

https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/28675