Striation-Based Broadband Source Localization Using a Particle Velocity Sensor in Deep Water

Depth-related striations in the acoustic intensities due to interference between the direct and sea surface reflected arrivals have been exploited to estimate the source depth by vertical arrays deployed near the bottom of the deep sea. This article presents an efficient technique to predict the constructive and destructive interference striation patterns observed in the broadband acoustic intensities for both the pressure and particle velocity (
PV
) fields. The consistency of striation patterns for the pressure and PV fields provides a basis for striation matching methods extended from the pressure array to a PV sensor array or an acoustic vector sensor array. To estimate the source depth, 1- and 2-D striation pattern matching methods have been proposed, which match the measured striations with the replica over either the frequency or the source range for each hypothesized source depth. Their effectiveness and performance have been evaluated through simulations and experimental data of a PV sensor in deep water. The results demonstrate that they have a narrow main lobe width and a good performance under a low signal-to-noise ratio and are applicable for shallow and distant sources when the number of interference striations is few.