Experimental results for direction of arrival estimation with a single acoustic vector sensor in shallow water

Abstract

We study the performances of several computationally efficient and simple techniques for estimating direction of arrival (DOA) of an underwater acoustic source using a single acoustic vector sensor (AVS) in shallow water. Underwater AVS is a compact device, which consists of one hydrophone and three accelerometers in a packaged form, measuring scalar pressure and three-dimensional acceleration simultaneously at a single position. A very controlled experimental setup is prepared to test how well-known techniques, namely, arctan-based, intensity-based, time domain beamforming, and frequency domain beamforming methods, perform in estimating DOA of a source in different circumstances. Experimental results reveal that for almost all cases beamforming techniques perform best. Moreover, arctan-based method, which is the simplest of all, provides satisfactory results for practical purposes.