Buck John R.

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Buck
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John R.
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  • Article
    A beamforming video recorder for integrated observations of dolphin behavior and vocalizations
    (Acoustical Society of America, 2005-03) Ball, Keenan R. ; Buck, John R.
    In this Letter we describe a beamforming video recorder consisting of a video camera at the center of a 16 hydrophone array. A broadband frequency-domain beamforming algorithm is used to estimate the azimuth and elevation of each detected sound. These estimates are used to generate a visual cue indicating the location of the sound source within the video recording, which is synchronized to the acoustic data. The system provided accurate results in both lab calibrations and a field test. The system allows researchers to correlate the acoustic and physical behaviors of marine mammals during studies of social interactions.
  • Article
    Captive dolphins, Tursiops truncatus, develop signature whistles that match acoustic features of human-made model sounds
    (Acoustical Society of America, 2002-08) Miksis, Jennifer L. ; Tyack, Peter L. ; Buck, John R.
    This paper presents a cross-sectional study testing whether dolphins that are born in aquarium pools where they hear trainers' whistles develop whistles that are less frequency modulated than those of wild dolphins. Ten pairs of captive and wild dolphins were matched for age and sex. Twenty whistles were sampled from each dolphin. Several traditional acoustic features (total duration, duration minus any silent periods, etc.) were measured for each whistle, in addition to newly defined flatness parameters: total flatness ratio (percentage of whistle scored as unmodulated), and contiguous flatness ratio (duration of longest flat segment divided by total duration). The durations of wild dolphin whistles were found to be significantly longer, and the captive dolphins had whistles that were less frequency modulated and more like the trainers' whistles. Using a standard t-test, the captive dolphin had a significantly higher total flatness ratio in 9/10 matched pairs, and in 8/10 pairs the captive dolphin had significantly higher contiguous flatness ratios. These results suggest that captive-born dolphins can incorporate features of artificial acoustic models made by humans into their signature whistles.
  • Thesis
    Implementation and evaluation of a dual-sensor time-adaptive EM algorithm for signal enhancement
    (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1991-08) Buck, John R.
    This thesis describes the implementation and evaluation of an adaptive time-domain algorithm for signal enhancement from multiple-sensor observations. The algorithm is first derived as a noncausal time-domain algorithm, then converted into a causal, recursive form. A more computationally efficient gradient-based parameter estimation step is also presented. The results of several experiments using synthetic data are shown. These experiments first illustrate that the algorithm works on data meeting all the assumptions made by the algorithm, then provide a basis for comparing the performance of the algorithm against the performance of a noncausal frequency-domain algorithm solving the same problem. Finally, an evaluation is made of the performance of the simpler gradient-based parameter estimation step.
  • Thesis
    Single mode excitation in the shallow water acoustic channel using feedback control
    (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1996-06) Buck, John R.
    The shallow water acoustic channel supports far-field propagation in a discrete set of modes. Ocean experiments have confirmed the modal nature of acoustic propagation, but no experiment has successfully excited only one of the suite of mid-frequency propagating modes propagating in a coastal environment. The ability to excite a single mode would be a powerful tool for investigating shallow water ocean processes. A feedback control algorithm incorporating elements of adaptive estimation, underwater acoustics, array processing and control theory to generate a high-fidelity single mode is presented. This approach also yields a cohesive framework for evaluating the feasibility of generating a single mode with given array geometries, noise characteristics and source power limitations. Simulations and laboratory waveguide experiments indicate the proposed algorithm holds promise for ocean experiments.