Cell noise at the output of a MFP beamformer in shallow water

• Published in: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 1999-02, Vol.105 (2_Supplement), p.1105-1105
• Main Authors: Booth, Newell O., Schey, Phil W., Abawi, Ahmad T.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0001-4966; 1520-8524
• DOI: 10.1121/1.425175

Measurements of ambient noise in search cells at the output of linear and adaptive beamformers are presented for data from three arrays deployed simultaneously in the SWellEX-96 experiment (200-m water depth off San Diego, CA). Previous papers by the authors have demonstrated the application of matched-field processing (MFP) to the detection and localization of submerged acoustic sources using the SWellEX-96 arrays. In this paper, the arrays (horizontal, vertical, and tilted-vertical lines) were processed to obtain cell noise spectra in noisy and quiet regions of the range, depth, and azimuth search space. Array noise gain measurements quantitatively compare the noise rejection capability of the arrays and processing methods. Frequency, integration time, array orientation, number of elements, and aperture are important parameters. Results are presented for linear and adaptive beamforming methods using plane-wave, focused plane-wave, and MFP steering vectors. [Work sponsored by the Office of Naval Research.]