A user friendly toolbox for exploratory data analysis of underwater sound

The underwater acoustics research group at the Portuguese Naval academy has been working for some years on unsupervised classification of underwater sound [1-3]. Some software was developed using techniques developed by this group, but adapting the software developed during the research phase to the operational programs (that must be operated by less skilled personnel) proved to be difficult. So as to make the transition smoother, it was decided to use MATLAB both during the research phase and as development system for the operational program. By imposing some compliance rules during the exploratory phase, the same code can be seamlessly integrated with the operational program. Furthermore, the software developed constitutes a signal processing and classification toolbox that can be used by researchers or end-users with little effort. The toolbox is publicly available, and a tutorial was written so as to make the learning curve smoother. In this paper we present this toolbox, showing intended uses, available routines, and end-user programs.