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Department of Engineering Science and Ocean Engineering Professor Dr. Chi-Fang Chen Awarded the Medal of Naval Distinguished Service for Her Assistance to the Ministry of Defense in Developing an Independent Sonar Performance Analysis System

Starting from 1995, for nine consecutive years Dr. chi-Fang Chen led the research team of NTU Underwater Acoustics Laboratory, which, with the uninterrupted funding support from the Defense Technology Cooperative Applied Research Unit of the National Science Council and related naval units such as the Anti-submarine Warfare Command Center, the Anti-submarine Air Command, the Atmospheric Ocean Survey Bureau, and the Anti-submarine Warfare Support Center, launched 9 research projects and completed the research and development of the software for ASORPS (Advanced Sonar Range Prediction System). Operators of the ASORPS need only feed the relevant acquired data into the system to provide decision making information to the battlefield commanders.

At present ASORPS is the first independently developed sonar performance analysis system of Taiwan, and the first sonar performance analysis system suited for the oceans around Taiwan. As a successful example of academic cooperation in the development of defense technology, ASORPS not only can predict the environmental data surrounding the battle zone, but also can analyze the best military tactics under such environments.

In order to make the functions of ASORPS more comprehensive, Professor Chi-Fang Chen has completed other related researches which include "Evaluation of the Effectiveness of High-frequency and Low-frequency Sonar in the seawaters surrounding Taiwan," Study of the Forecast Model for Underwater Background Noise in the Oceans surrounding Taiwan," and "Establishment of an Environmental Database Module and System Upgrade".""

The Atmospheric Ocean Survey Team of the U.S. Navy came to Taiwan in May, 2007 and did an evaluation of the ASORPS. The U.S. Team concluded that the ASORPS was very beneficial to the support of anti-submarine warfare and suggested that the Ministry of Defense of Taiwan continue to pour budget and manpower into the project, so that the system would be able to achieve the same functions as the PC-IMAT system used by the U.S. Navy. The American evaluation indicates that the R&D capability of the Taiwan military and the ASORPS have reached international standards.

From 2004 to 2007, Dr. Chen and the research team members of the Underwater Acoustics Lab actively engaged in the integrated experiment project supported by the Applied Research Unit of the National Science Council . So far they have achieved the following goals:

  1. Establishing an uncertainty statistical analysis model for marine and acoustical environmental data, using graphs to provide the analysis of the confidence interval of the predicted sonar range and supplying the analytical data to the field commander for making the appropriate tactical decisions.
  2. Integrating information fusion technology with marine data forecast model and underwater acoustical data solver model to establish a complete work process for the prediction of sonar range, allowing Navy warships to obtain the best detection performance.
  3. Establishing the evaluation tools and data analysis power for marine acoustic experiments, allowing the Navy to have the tools for performance evaluation and sonar testing when it conducts actual testing for anti-submarine parameters in the future.
  4. Establishing the design and implementation of internal acoustic experiments and the analytical power of voice arrays to support the Navy's anti-submarine R&D.
  5. Establishing the collection of the acoustical parameters for underwater sonar system and its database.
  6. Establishment of a mode structure for integrating marine environments, acoustical experiments and reconnaissance.

Chinese version