Real-Time Multi-Channel Acoustic Beamforming Using a Lightweight Microcontroller Processor

In this paper, we share our unique data acquisition system that is built around an open-source ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller system on a chip, the Teensy 3.6 for underwater acoustic beamforming applications implementation on autonomous vehicles. The paper demonstrates that our embedded software architecture running on this powerful open-source platform provides ample computational capabilities to carry out many advanced calculations in real-time, and share our current progress in acoustic signal processing applications, especially around real-time bearing estimation using an MDAS. The goal is to provide a low-power, extremely lightweight, flexible data acquisition system for sensor integration on extended endurance autonomous vehicles with constrained size, weight, and power budgets. Ultimately, this signal processing approach will enable autonomous vehicles and platforms to use complex multi-channel sensory information for autonomous situational awareness.