Signal Processing Requirements and System Design for Sensor Arrays Using COTS Components

This paper provides signal processing requirements of algorithms involved in sensor array systems so that an appropriate processing architecture can be designed and developed. The system design parameters taken into consideration include number of sensors and sensor spacing, sensor array frequency and sampling rate along with computational complexity of processing algorithms such as beam forming and spectral analysis. In this paper a passive sensor array configuration has been presented for underwater surveillance systems. Signal processing requirements in terms of data rates and processor loading have been estimated for real-time operation. This paper presents a Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) based processing system consisting of data acquisition boards, processing boards and a display processor for meeting the demands of real-time sensor array processing.