A novel bearing-assisted TDOA-GROA approach for passive source localization

Purpose–The passive source localization(PSL)problem using angles of arrival(AOA),time differences of arrival(TDOA)or gain ratios of arrival(GROA)is generally nonlinear and nontrival.In this research,the purpose of this paper is to design an accurate hybrid source localization approach to solve the PSL problem.The inspiration is drawn from the fact that the bearings,TDOAs and GROAs are complementary in terms of their geometry properties.Design/methodology/approach–The maximum-likelihood(ML)method is reexamined by using hybrid measurements.Being assisted by the bearings,a new hybrid weighted least-squares(WLS)method is then proposed by jointly utilizing the bearing,TDOA and GROA measurements.Findings–Theoretical performance analysis illustrates that the mean-square error of the ML or WLS method can attain the Cramér-Rao lower bound for Gaussian noiseover small error region.However,the WLS method has much lower computational complexity than the ML algorithm.Compared with the AOA-only,TDOA-only,AOA-TDOA,TDOA-GROA methods,the localization accuracy can be greatly improved by combining the AOAs,TDOAs and GROAs,especially for some specific geometries.Originality/value–A novel bearing-assisted TDOA-GROA method is proposed for source localization,and a new hybrid WLS estimator is presented inspired from the fact that the bearings,TDOAs and GROAs are complementary in terms of their geometry properties.

Shallow water source localization using a mobile short horizontal array

This paper presents an approach to the challenging is- sue of passive source localization in shallow water using a mobile short horizontal linear array with length less than ten meters. The short array can be conveniently placed on autonomous underwa- ter vehicles and deployed for adaptive spatial sampling. However, the use of such small aperture passive sonar systems makes it difficult to acquire sufficient spatial gain for localizing long-range sources. To meet the requirement, a localization approach that employs matched-field based techniques that enable the short ho- rizontal linear array is used to passively localize acoustic sources in shallow water. Furthermore, the broadband processing and inter-position processing provide robustness against ocean en- vironmental mismatch and enhance the stability of the estimation process. The proposed approach＇s ability to localize acoustic sources in shallow water at different signal-to-noise ratios is examined through the synthetic test cases where the sources are located at the endfire and some other bearing of the mobile short horizontal linear array. The presented results demonstrate that the positional parameters of the estimated source build up over time as the array moves at a low speed along a straight line at a constant depth.

Theory of passive localization for underwater sources based on acoustic ray modeling

The theory of passive localization for underwater sources based on acoustic ray channel modeling is discussed. The principles of channel modeling in Ray-theory, determination of eigenrays which connect source and receiver, analysis of DOA arriving structure and time delay spectrum arriving structure, their relationship to source location are given in the paper. Source location is estimated by matching measured DOA and TDS to their calculated counterparts. The method of Ray-theory based passive localization features its simplicity, less calculation, short array aperture and robust performance to environment parameters, as compared with those methods based on Normal Mode theory.