2017 IEEE 7th International Conference on Underwater System Technology: Theory and Applications

Passive Acoustic Detection Unit for Autonomous

Underwater Vehicle Subsystem Based on
Hydrophone Sensor
M. Fahmi Amri1 and Zool Hilmi Ismail2
1,2
Centre of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics,
Malaysia Japan International Institute of Technology,
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia,
Jalan Sultan Yahya Petra, 54100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Abstract—With the arrival of new robotic technologies such as In order to drive the AUV, there are several sensors vital to
an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), a number of tasks the movement of the AUV such as sonar, IMU, GPS, and
that cannot be done by human now can be accomplished and hydrophone. Among stated sensors, hydrophones play a vital
bring human to reach the dangerous and unreachable areas. role in maneuvering the robot to exact location needed.
AUV can be related to the most invention which can reduce
Hydrophone is an underwater microphone that converts the
human’s work using equipment and sensors that control and
perform the particular tasks. In this sense, we propose a unit that pressures impulses acoustic waves into electrical signals that
able to fetch signals from beacon or acoustic pinger in order to used for communication to drive the robot. Hydrophone is
move the AUV. based on a piezoelectric transducer that produces electricity
when subjected to a pressure change. Pressure changes also
Index Terms—Underwater vehicle, acoustic sensor, AUV, can be said as acoustic pinger are usually emitted by beacon or
robotics. pinger located in certain places in the water creates a waypoint
for AUV direction.
I. INTRODUCTION
By using hydrophones alone without a system to process the
An Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) is an signal fetch by the sensors do not give any good to AUV to
underwater vehicle which travels underwater. Autonomous localize the beacon or pinger. The acoustic detection unit is
Underwater Vehicle falls in service robot category which important in determine the signals that emit from the beacon
typically used for navigation and tracking task. AUV is propel so that clean and process signal can be extract to get heading
through the water by propulsion system, handle and managed and elevation for the AUV.
the maneuverable in three dimension by an on-board
computer. By fetching data from sensors and processed on an II. MOTIVATION OF WORK
on-board computer which included pre-programmed
trajectories, permits the vehicle to move whenever required. This project consists of creating subsystem unit for
An AUV convey certain typical sensors used to navigate Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. This unit named as passive
autonomously which included, inertial measurement units acoustic detection will be used to process signal detected by
(IMU), depth sensors, sonars, Doppler Velocity Logger (DVL) hydrophone.
and hydrophones. [1]
The heading and possible distance movement of
Autonomous Underwater Vehicle is determined by waypoint
(beacon) in the water which is emitting specified acoustic
pinger. The hydrophone array is used to fetch this acoustic
frequency but the electrical signal (acoustic frequency) from
hydrophone does not give any vital information, it is just raw
signal. As hydrophone array use for listen and fetch the
acoustic pinger, the subsystem is suggested to process the raw
signal and deliver the suitable signal for information extract at
the on-board computer.

III. DESIGN OF PASSIVE ACOUSTIC DETECTION UNIT

A. Underwater Hydrophone Sensor

For this project, two hydrophones sensors are use and

arrange in array form to create sensor array or hydrophones
array. [2] The hydrophones array is use to listen and fetching
Fig. 1. Sharpedo Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Inside a Pool
acoustic signal.

978-1-5386-1918-6/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE

 TC4013 hydrophones from Teledyne Reson is used to
listening and fetching acoustic signal. This hydrophone is an
excellent transducer in measurement of sound signals and
calibrations within a broad frequency range. [3] In addition,
TC4013 provides uniform omnidirectional sensitivities in both
horizontal and vertical planes up to high frequencies. The
usable frequency range is from 1hz to 170kHz and a high
sensitivity relative to its size.
Theoretically the hydrophones are spaced apart by a
maximum of the half-wavelength of the highest target
frequency being measure which is 37.5kHz.

Fig. 4. Instrumentation Amplifier

A design instrumentation amplifier circuit based on TL071

Thus, from the equation, hydrophone will be arranging by 2 op amp as shown above. The amplifier operates from +/- 12V
cm apart each other. DC. This amplifier gain can be controlled using potentiometer
which place on Rg which make this circuit suitable for this
project since output from hydrophone just in millivolt range.

C. Narrow Bandpass Filter

A bandpass filter is a circuit which is designed to pass
signals or frequency in a certain band of frequencies while
attenuating all signals outside this band. For bandpass filter,
parameter such as high and low cut-off frequencies (fh an fi),
the bandwidth (BW), the center of frequency fc, center-
frequency gain, and the selectivity or Q are very important in
designing narrow bandpass filter. In a narrow bandpass filter,
Fig. 2. Hydrophone Array
the output voltage peaks at the center frequency fc.
For this project, narrow bandpass filter is useful because
peak frequency need to be find which is 37.5 kHz, so another
unwanted frequency will be eliminated.

Fig. 3. TC 4013 Hydrophone

B. Instrumentation Amplifier

Amplification stages is process where the raw signal is take

Fig. 5. Narrow Bandpass Filter
in and amplify to get the phase information easily. [4] This
stage is proposed due to high impedance of piezoelectric affect
As shown on the Fig. 5, this circuit is based on TL071
the amplitude of electrical signal which is usually only on
which need to be feed with 12V+ and 12V- to be functioning.
millivolt range. This circuit is designed to achieve high Q factor so that
For amplifier circuit, there are variety of amplification frequency 37.5 kHz can be obtained.
method can be applied, and for this project, instrumentation
amplifier is chosen to amplify raw signal.
Instrumentation amplifier is a kind of differential amplifier D. Voltage Shifter
with additional input buffer stages. The addition of input Voltage shifter can be called as diode clamper circuit and
buffer stages makes it easy to match the amplifier with the build with a diode that shifts an entire AC signal up or down
preceding stage. by a certain DC offset determined by the biasing values. This
circuit does not change the value of the original signal. It
simply moves it up or down a certain DC level. The signal through serial communication with LabVIEW software.
itself is unchanged. The clamper circuit does not cut off or
restrict any part of the amplitude. It simply shifts it up or
down. IV. LABVIEW SOFTWARE
Basically, this circuit is implemented to change the AC
signal +/- V behavior to suit with the microcontroller since it Analysis is a fundamental part of many test, measurement,
just can read signal from 0V to 5V. and control applications because it gives insight into what our
data means. [6] LabVIEW provides built in analysis
capabilities in an integrated environment, enabling acoustic
detection unit to obtain results faster.

A. System Design for LabVIEW

LabVIEW will be processing signal from Arduino as the

input obtained through serial communication.

Fig. 6. Voltage Shifter Circuit

This circuit is build based with a diode 1N4001 so that the

entire AC signal will shifting upwards and be fed to
microcontroller.

E. Microcontroller
Arduino Uno is used for convert the shifted AC signal to
DC signal so that it can be processed. The idea to use Arduino
is to minimal cost of building the acoustic detection unit.
Arduino Uno is microcontroller board based on the
Fig. 8. LabVIEW VI’s
ATmega328P and it has 14 digital input/output pins (of which
6 can be use as pulse width modulation outputs), 6 analog As shown on Fig. 8, the AC signal from Arduino will be
inputs which will be used for this project, a 16 MHz quartz convert to DC signal so that LabVIEW software can
crystal, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header and a processing the data.
reset button. [5] It contains everything needed to support the
microcontroller just simply connect it to a computer with a V. RESULTS
USB cable or power it with a AC-DC adapter or battery to get
started. In addition, this Arduino can be used to create a serial For this section, results from hydrophone, amplification
communication as intended to do in this project. circuit and LabVIEW are obtained.

Fig. 7. Low-Cost Embedded System - Arduino UNO

Fig. 9. Hydrophone signal
As depicted on the Fig. 6, signal from voltage filter or diode
clamper circuit will be fed to Arduino to process the signal As shown on the Fig. 9, signal from beacon detected by
hydrophone is 37.3 kHz which near with 37.5 kHz and just kHz +/-. The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is computed to
64mV. Beacon is emitting millivolt range signal to reduce generate power spectrum graph to show highest peak for
power usage so that it can last long before need to recharge. detected frequency thus deliver this information to on-board
computer.

VI. CONCLUSION

This finding of this study will benefit to the robot that use
acoustic sensors for movement considering that sensors play
an important role in robotic technologies. Passive acoustic
detection unit is important subsystem for each Autonomous
Underwater Vehicle. As this unit is can play a big role in
mapping or chart new area for oil and gas sector and
researcher and besides that, operate in dangerous environment
for searching crashes underwater water thus adding great
advantages for humankind. Thus, for the autonomous
underwater vehicle, this project will improve the technology
Fig. 10. Amplified signal for detection signal for movement of the robot underwater.

The signal is amplified by using instrumentation amplifier REFERENCES

with 30 gain so that microcontroller can do the data
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Jamaluddin. “Development of Hydrophone Sensor System for
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Source Localization using microphone array,” Lect. Notes Electr. Eng.
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[3] Kamble, Cheeraj Kotagiri, et al. “Research and Development of Matsya
3.0, Autonomous Underwater Vehicle.’’
[4] Yue Kan, Pengfei Wang, Fusheng Zha and Mantian Li. “Hardware
Design of Passive Acoustic Source Localization System Based on a
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[5] https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardUno
[6] Bingcai Zhang, Lin Liu, Guangfeng Gao. “Data Acquisition and Signal
Processing based on LabVIEW[J].” Instrument and Sensor Technology,
2007, (12).

Fig. 11. Input signal on LabVIEW

Fig. 12. Frequency detected (37.5kHz)

From Fig. 10 to 12, the detected frequency is about 37.5