A new sonar localization strategy using receiver beam characteristics

Sonar localization is addressed in this paper and solved for a system equipped with one emitter and two receivers with known directivity. The latter, along with the spectra of the received echoes, is used to estimate the orientation of the target with respect to the sonar system, while time of flight is measured to calculate the distance. In particular, the difference and the ratio of the right and left receivers' spectra are compared to those of the beam patterns of the two receivers. The orientation at which their values are equal is chosen as that of the target. Simulations are performed making use of the acoustic simulation of a bat's beam pattern to test the method. In noisy conditions, i. e. SNR = 50dB, most of the orientations are estimated with an error of 0°.