A Fast and Robust Localization Method for Low-Frequency Acoustic Source: Variational Bayesian Inference Based on Nonsynchronous Array Measurements

Abstract

This article proposes a variational Bayesian (VB) inference based on the nonsynchronous array measurement (NAM) (VB-NAM) method in order to obtain the fast and robust localization of low-frequency acoustic sources. To enlarge the aperture size compared with the prototype array, the NAM is performed to measure the acoustic pressures with low-frequency based on the forward power propagation model. The implementation of the NAM can be reformulated into a cross-spectral matrix (CSM) completion problem. Then, to solve the inverse problem of the NAM power propagation model, the VB inference based on the Student-t priors and Kullback–Leibler (KL) divergence optimization is proposed. The advantages of the proposed VB-NAM benefit from the optimization of matrix inversion and adaptive estimation of regularization parameters. The contribution of the adaptive parameter evaluation is to reduce the impact of multiple interferences (such as additive noise and the matrix completion error) in NAM. Finally, both simulations at 800 Hz and experimental results at 1000 Hz are presented to show the validation of the proposed VB-NAM method, even under the anisotropic Gaussian noise conditions. Algorithm performance and iteration process are analyzed to demonstrate the efficiency and robustness.