Source depth estimation using angle-range interference pattern in deep ocean bottom bounce area

Abstract

Passive sonar limits the ability to sample vertical scale spatiotemporally, and the received signal is indistinct by noise, resulting in the performance degradation or even failure of the source depth estimation method in deep ocean bottom bounce area. When vertical line array is arranged near the sea surface to locate the source by matched-field processing in bottom bounce area, there is great ambiguity in depth dimension. In this work, the problem of source depth estimation in bottom bounce area is addressed. The peak stripe of angle-range interference pattern is modeled and analyzed based on the ray theory, and a source depth estimation method is proposed, which comprises two parts: estimating sound source depth by utilizing peak stripe fluctuation characteristic combined with spatial spectrum analysis, and reconstructing interference pattern using principal component analysis. The flowchart of the method is listed as follows. Firstly, the spatial spectrum corresponding to each range is spliced to obtain the original angle-range interference pattern. Secondly, the original interference pattern is denoised by principal component analysis to obtain the reconstructed interference structure. Finally, the fluctuation period of peak fringes is extracted from the reconstructed interference pattern to calculate the source depth. Under the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) condition, the peak stripe destroyed by noise will reappear in the reconstructed interference pattern and the estimation result of sound source depth will be more accurate, making the source depth estimation method suitable for bottom bounce area. The method combines the space-time cumulative gain of the array and the low-rank characteristic of the interference pattern. The simulation results obtained by Bellhop indicate that the fluctuation period of peak stripe depends on the depth and frequency of the source, which is consistent with the modeling result, and the source depth can be estimated precisely by spatial Fourier transform. The simulation results also show that the rank of the interference pattern is very low and the peak stripe can be composed of a few principal components. Monte Carlo experimental results indicate that the estimated results of the source depth by using reconstructed interference pattern are more accurate than those without using principal component analysis at low SNR condition. The proposed method can achieve more than 80% accuracy at –3 dB SNR.