Source ranging based on frequency band decomposition and distance weighting using a single acoustic vector sensor in shallow water

A novel method is proposed for the passive source range estimation based on union processing of pressure and particle horizontal velocity. Autocorrelation functions' warping spectra of pressure and particle velocities have frequency invariability. The spectra of the warped autocorrelation functions of pressure and particle horizontal velocity have the same line spectrum feature, while the spectrum of the warped autocorrelation function of particle vertical velocity possesses both line and broadband spectrum features. Moreover, the warped autocorrelation function's spectrum of particle vertical velocity has more peaks, and the peak width is broader than those of pressure and particle horizontal velocity. In this paper, source ranges are estimated based on frequency band decomposition and distance weighting, and a guided source with a known range is employed to provide the crucial frequency invariant features. Experimental data in shallow water with an iso-speed profile are used to verify the approach which can reasonably estimate source ranges with the relative errors of the source ranging basically less than 7%. This method can effectively reduce the mainlobe width and background level of the cost function, and can significantly improve the resolution of source range estimation, compared with the results of conventional source ranging approach that uses a single pressure hydrophone.