Picket Line
Instruments for Localizing Infrasound Sources
Using sensor technology developed at the National Center for Physical Acoustics, HatchPoint was tasked with developing instrumentation for detecting and localizing low frequency acoustic events (Infrasound) in order to support the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty.
Work included the development of the electronics and software to support data acquisition from these sensors as well as designing prototypes for both wired and wireless instrument nodes. These nodes could be quickly and easily deployed sing small teams into phased array monitoring systems kilometers in size. GPS was used both for node localization as well as time stamping of data for beam-forming.
The system was successfully used to detect both surface and aerial explosions, and has since been deployed in support of research efforts designed to improve understanding of natural events such as the formation of tornadoes and hurricanes.