Office of Naval Research Awards $355,000 to the CAC for Compressive Sensing and Sonar Research

Building on 15 years of successful collaboration with the Office of Naval Research, the Center for Advanced Communications (CAC) marked the start of 2010 with two ONR grants totaling $355,000 for breakthrough research in radar imaging and sonar communication.

A global leader in urban sensing and through-wall imaging, the CAC secured a two-and-a-half year grant of $260,000 to explore the emerging technology of compressive sensing. Compressive sensing achieves efficiencies in signal collection, particularly in sparse environments in which only a few features or targets exist in an almost blank or zero background.

“Compressive sensing also reduces costs for signal collection because it reduces the number of data samples, number of frequency samples, and number of antennas, without compromising the quality of the final image,” says Dr. Moeness Amin, director of the CAC and principal investigator on the project. Currently an emerging area of research and development, compressive sensing will have important practical applications for the medical, industrial, and military communities.

The Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Newport, R.I., also awarded a one-year $95,000 grant to Dr. Bijan Mobasseri, professor of electrical and computer engineering and principal investigator for the CAC research project designed to enhance underwater acoustic communications capabilities. Dr. Mobasseri and his team will develop algorithms to embed information in sonar for authentication, identification, and covert underwater communication purposes. “This research will help the U.S. Navy carry out its missions more securely by identifying sonar transmissions that may have originated from sources not related to the Navy's assets. Other venues include covert communications using biologically-generated emissions from marine mammals as cover signals," says Dr. Mobasseri.