Source speed estimation using a pilot tone in a high-frequency acoustic modem

This thesis proposes to estimate the speed of a moving acoustic source by either linear or non linear processing of the resulting Doppler shift present in a high-frequency pilot tone. The source is an acoustic modem (Hermes) which currently uses moving average to estimate and compensate for Doppler shift. A new auto regressive approach to Doppler estimation (labeled IIR method in the text) promises to give a better estimate. The results for a simulated peak velocity of 2 m/s in the presence of additive noise showed an RMSE of 0.23 m/s using moving average vs. 0.00018 m/s for the auto regressive approach. The SNR was 75 dB. The next objective was to compare the estimated Doppler velocity obtained using the two algorithms with the experimental values recorded in real time. The setup consisted of a receiver hydrophone attached to a towing carriage that moved with a known velocity with respect to a stationary acoustic source. The source transmitted 375 kHz pilot tone. The received pilot tone data were preprocessed using the two algorithms to estimate both Doppler shift and Doppler velocity. The accuracy of the algorithms was compared against the true velocity values of the carriage. The RMSE for a message from experiments conducted indoor for constant velocity of 0.4 m/s was 0.6055 m/s using moving average, 0.0780 m/s using auto regressive approach. The SNIR was 6.3 dB.