Applying Reconfigurable Computing to Acoustic Sensors

There is growing interest in the U.S. Armed Forces in the development of microsensor systems that are easily deployed and that support reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition operations. Such systems contain sensors, signal conditioning and processing subsystems, a radio link, and a power source. The role of microsensors is to autonomously detect, classify, and localize targets of interest in a variety of environments. It is generally thought that a number of different sensor types (acoustic, seismic, magnetic, and imaging) may be used to provide orthogonal features to aid in this detection, classification, and localization. These systems must be small (hand-carried), light (100s of grams), inexpensive (less than $200), easily deployable, and have a long operating life.