Signal processing: Ubiquitous in acoustics

The bat sends out a pulse of sound, hears the reflection off of an insect, and moves in for a meal. Similarly, a whale locates its prey with the reflections of sound. Both bats and whales also use reflected sounds to navigate and avoid obstacles. Humans hear speech and infer the message being send by the speaker. The listener to music gets the artistic message being sent by the composer and musician. Man made sounds in the ocean are used to communicate, locate objects, and monitor environmental conditions. The reflection of an ultrasound pulse off of a beating heart gives information to the doctor about the health of a fetus. These are but a few of the examples where “signal processing,” by a machine, human and/or animal pulls information from a received acoustic signal. Signal processing is an important component of the activities and research conducted by the members of many technical committees in the ASA. The members of the Signal Processing in Acoustics Technical Committee, through theoretical development, implementation, and analysis study algorithms and acoustic signals in areas that span the society. This talk will present an overview of a few of these activities.