Shandong Science

   

Low-power underwater ship detection and acoustic wake-up system for complex marine environments

QU Feng-Zhong1,2, DONG Fei-Hong1, WANG Zhao-Han1, CHEN Yang1, ZHANG Wen-Kai1, LI Yun-Zhou3, YU Hua-Peng4, WEI Yan1,2,*   

  1. 1. State Key Laboratory of Ocean Sensing & Ocean College, Zhejiang University, Zhoushan, 316021, China;  2. Hainan Institute of Zhejiang University, Sanya 572025, China;  3. State Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography, Institute of Oceanographic Instrumentation, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Qingdao 266061, China;  4. National Innovation Institute of Defense Technology, Academy of Military Science, Beijing 100071, China
  • Received:2026-01-26 Accepted:2026-04-13 Published:2026-11-04 Online:2026-11-04
  • Contact: WEI Yan E-mail:redwine447@zju.edu.cn

Abstract: To address the challenges of high false-alarm rates and excessive energy consumption in non-cooperative target detection under conditions of low signal-to-noise ratio, overlapping radiated noise from multiple vessels, and complex background noise in typical nearshore channels and vessel operating areas, this study proposes a low-power underwater ship detection and acoustic wake-up system for complex marine environments. The system employs a vector hydrophone as the sensing unit and integrates coherent acoustic intensity estimation with an adaptive thresholding algorithm to establish a robust ship-detection model. A low-power sleep mode and event-driven wake-up mechanism are implemented using a multi-tone wake-up waveform and a frequency-domain constant false-alarm rate (CFAR) algorithm. Field experiments were conducted in representative regions of the East China Sea and South China Sea, encompassing four application scenarios: offline analysis, real-time monitoring, buoy-based deployment, and remote wake-up, to validate the effectiveness of the proposed system. Experimental results show that the system achieved a radiated-noise detection gain of approximately 15 dB under complex nearshore background conditions and a maximum wake-up success rate of 91.3% over distances of 0.8–5.0 km, with no false alarms observed during testing. Compared with conventional energy-based detection methods, the proposed system exhibits significantly lower false-alarm rates and higher detection reliability in complex acoustic environments.

Key words: vector hydrophone, underwater ship detection, coherent acoustic intensity estimation; ship detection, adaptive thresholding, multi-tone wake-up waveform

CLC Number: 

  • TN954

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits third parties to freely share (i.e., copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt (i.e., remix, transform, or build upon the material) the articles published in this journal, provided that appropriate credit is given, a link to the license is provided, and any changes made are indicated. The material may not be used for commercial purposes. For details of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license, please visit: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0