Patent ID: 6850173

Claim:
A waterway surveillance system comprising: a plurality of underwater nodes deployed at respective predetermined locations within a waterway, each of said plurality of underwater nodes comprising acoustic arrays operative to detect acoustic pressure wave signal attributes from an entity in said waterway, each of said plurality of underwater nodes comprising circuitry operable for producing digital data related to said acoustic pressure wave signal attributes of said entity, each of said plurality of underwater nodes being operative to transmit said digital data in the form of another signal through an underwater environment; at least one data processing center which as its input receives the underwater acoustic digital signals transmitted by the plurality of underwater nodes and processes them to provide acoustic attributes for said entity; a database operative to store predetermined acoustic attributes data objects for a variety of entities, said data comprising acoustic attribute data objects associated with respective acoustic attributes of said variety of entities; and an identification module operative to compare the acoustic attribute data objects, derived from acoustic pressure wave data from an entity in said waterway, with respective ones of the acoustic attribute identification data objects of said predetermined identification data objects for a variety of entities; said predetermined identification data objects being based upon a history of said data objects for said entities.