In underwater exploration and marine mapping, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) rely heavily on side-scan sonar systems. The performance of these systems is entirely dependent on the physical characteristics of the transmitted acoustic wave, known as the ‘ping’. Traditional sonars transmit short, fixed-frequency pulses. However, modern advanced military and research systems utilize Linear Frequency Modulated (LFM) Chirps-waveforms that sweep across a spectrum of frequencies over a precise ti
Participants must design, prototype, and demonstrate a physical, self-contained Software-Defined Sonar Transmitter Payload Module.Instead of a software simulation, the solution must be a physical hardware unit built...
In underwater exploration and marine mapping, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) rely heavily on side-scan sonar systems Traditional sonars transmit short, fixed-frequency pulses However, modern advanced military and research systems utilize Linear Frequency Modulated (LFM) Chirps-waveforms that sweep across a spectrum of frequencies over a precise ti
Participants must design, prototype, and demonstrate a physical, self-contained Software-Defined Sonar Transmitter Payload Module.Instead of a software simulation, the solution must be a physical hardware unit built using an embedded system (e.g., STM32, ESP32, Texas Instruments DSP, or an FPGA) integrated with custom analog electronics. The hardware must ingest real-time environmental data (via physical sensors, or analog voltage dials acting as sensor inputs) and mathematically synthesize and output an optimized, real-time physical analog waveform via a Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC) and amplifier circuit.The entire hardware architecture must focus heavily on low-power consumption and hardwarelevel optimization. Teams must utilize low-level configurations (such as Direct Memory Acce