Abstract
This study was undertaken to provide a preliminary answer to the question of how aperture size affects beamwidth and resolution for vertical line array data which is processed using the (MEM) beamformer. This was done empirically by examining the (MEM) beamformed output of a nine‐element vertical line array and reducing the aperture by deleting hydrophones. Narrow‐band acoustic data were provided by a cw source (54 Hz) which was towed at a nominal depth of 91 m radially away from the array. The (MEM) beamformer was implemented using the Burg algorithm in complex form with averaging performed over the filter coefficients. The spatial spectrum was characterized in general by two dominant arrivals which varied in angular separation and level relative to the background noise. For arrivals with high signal‐to‐noise ratios and large angular separation, preliminary results showed little degradation in beamwidth as the aperture was decreased by a factor of two. As the angular separation between arrivals decreased or when the signal‐to‐noise ratio decreased, beamwidth and resolution were degraded when the aperture was reduced.
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