Array gain for a conformal acoustic vector sensor array: An experimental study**Project supported by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2016M592782) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11274253 and 11604259).

Abstract

An acoustic vector sensor can measure the components of particle velocity and the acoustic pressure at the same point simultaneously, which provides a larger array gain against the ambient noise and a higher angular resolution than the omnidirectional pressure sensor. This paper presents an experimental study of array gain for a conformal acoustic vector sensor array in a practical environment. First, the manifold vector is calculated using the real measured data so that the effects of array mismatches can be minimized. Second, an optimal beamformer with a specific spatial response on the basis of the stable directivity of the ambient noise is designed, which can effectively suppress the ambient noise. Experimental results show that this beamformer for the conformal acoustic vector sensor array provides good signal-to-noise ratio enhancement and is more advantageous than the delay-and-sum and minimum variance distortionless response beamformers.