SBIR Phase II: Broadband Split-Beam Fish Tracker

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This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II Project will develop a broadband split-beam fisheries sonar system for shallow water applications. As the number of fish in rivers and streams diminishes and becomes threatened, endangered or extinct, there is a need for better fish monitoring tools for such shallow water environments. Through a series of workshops, the leaders in the riverine sonar community have highlighted several deficiencies in the current monitoring systems. This Phase II Project proposes to build a fish tracking and counting system that addresses many of these deficiencies, and that has a ten-fold better range resolution and at least a 6 dB improvement in detection. The broadband sonar system, to be built in the course of this project, will include (a) a unique bizonal shaded transceiver array, (b) a full complement of functions for collection, storage, analysis and display of data, and (c) a multi-hypothesis tracker for tracking fish in low SNR and dense target environments. The sonar system will be validated first in a comprehensive set of pool tests, and then subjected to a rigorous set of evaluation experiments in the Kenai and Copper Rivers of Alaska and in the Rogue River of Oregon.The commercial applications of this project are in a broad range of markets that require fish counting and tracking equipment. The overall market size for such equipment worldwide is estimated to be on the order of 1.8 billion dollars.