Whales localization using a large hydrophone array: Performance relative to Cramer-Rao bounds and confidence regions

Abstract

This paper provides a real-time passive underwater acoustic method to track multiple emitting whales using four or more omni-directional widely-spaced bottom-mounted hydrophones and to evaluate the performance of the system via the Cramér-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) and Monte Carlo simulations. After a non-parametric Teager-Kaiser-Mallat signal filtering, rough Time Delays Of Arrival are calculated, selected and filtered, and used to estimate the positions of whales for a linear sound speed profile. The complete algorithm is tested on real data from the NUWC and the AUTEC. The CRLB and Monte Carlo simulations are computed and compared with the tracking results. Our model is validated by similar results from the US Navy and Hawaii univ labs in the case of one whale, and by similar whales counting from the Columbia univ. ROSA lab in the case of multiple whales. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.