The Maritime Sensing program conducts multidisciplinary science and technology, research and development of acoustic and non-acoustic sensors and transduction systems as a means to provide next-generation sensing technologies for the Navy’s tactical surveillance and undersea warfare missions.
These systems may be carried as on-board equipment for Navy surface ships, submarines, aircraft, and unmanned vehicles; they may also be deployed from those platforms as mobile, drifting, or fixed ocean surveillance systems operating under autonomous or remote control.
Project scopes may range from component-level research and development to system-level technology demonstrations.
Research Concentration Areas
- Autonomous sensors with in-sensor signal processing
- Computationally intelligent sensor systems
- Automated system employment and command-and-control decision aids
- System design and system performance assessment tools
- Deployable sensor components, technology, and concepts of operations
- Deployable transduction source components, technology, and concepts of operations
- Energy storage technology, especially high-power/high-energy density technology
- Environmental adaptation for acoustic sensors
- Environmental sensors in support of acoustic and non-acoustic systems
- High-power, high-efficiency, low-cost, low-weight/volume transduction materials or designs
- High-efficiency, high-performance, non-acoustic sensor technologies, components, and assemblies
- Innovative sensor and/or communication/telemetry systems
- Innovative sensor delivery and deployment concepts
- Acoustic and non-acoustic sensors and sources for tactical and surveillance applications
- Volume and weight efficient power components
Research Challenges and Opportunities
- Persistent undersea acoustic surveillance
- Transducer technology
- Sensor system adaptation and control
- Acoustic and electromagnetic vector sensors
- Novel optical sensors
- Object and environmental sensing
- Non-acoustic mine and undersea warfare
- Deployable autonomous distributed systems and infrastructure
- Stand-off sensors
- Communication technologies and methodologies
- Dynamic Resource Allocation (Power/Energy, Data/Signal Processing, Telemetry/Communications)
How to Submit
For detailed application and submission information for this research topic, please refer to our broad agency announcement (BAA) No. N0001425SB001.
Contracts: All white papers and full proposals for contracts must be submitted through FedConnect; instructions are included in the BAA.
Grants: All white papers for grants must be submitted through FedConnect, and full proposals for grants must be submitted through grants.gov; instructions are included in the BAA.
Maritime Sensing Planning Letters
The Maritime Sensing program solicits informal planning letters or pre-proposals from prospective investigators as the first step in the proposal process.