Acoustic Telescope

Inventors: John Kemp. Ying-Tsong Lin, Don Peters

Background: Sound is a crucial tool for measuring and exploring ocean depths and ecosystems. Researchers, engineers, and scientists deploy multiple acoustic instruments to record sounds and measurements. Although instrumentation has made immense advances in recent years, using various devices can be expensive and time-consuming, either at once or sequentially. Developing a novel structure to measure ocean sounds simultaneously would greatly benefit users in all active industries - from research to oil and gas to aquaculture.

Technology: The Acoustic Telescope further expands remote deepwater exploration. The Telescope uses six hydrophones to listen to the ambient sound generated in biological, geophysical, meteorological events, and oceanographic and anthropogenic processes and activities. Using multiple hydrophones simultaneously creates one system capable of measuring and distinguishing imaging soundscapes, monitoring inference of marine life environment and interactions, and remote acoustic sensing of oceanographic, geological, and seismological processes. The novel instrument will generate an unprecedented integrated acoustic view of the ocean.