High-resolution direction finding without coherent signals number based on multibeam system

Abstract

Multibeam acoustic imaging systems are widely utilized for both large- and small-scale underwater investigations, especially for detecting underwater target. Processing backscattered echoes from the targets, the system can plot an acoustic image of target, and then estimate the parameters, such as direction and range. The backscattered echoes of target are coherent signals, and can be modeled as multiple highlights. Usually, the distance between the highlights is close, and the number of the highlights is unknown. Then, the directions cannot be directly estimated due to these highlights are not distinguished in the acoustic image. In this paper, an high-resolution method is proposed for estimating the directions of arrival (DOAs) of coherent highlight signals without signals number. The multibeam underwater acoustic imaging technology and the beamspace MUSIC algorithm are combined together. In this method, eigen-decomposition is skipped, so that coherent signals' DOA can be estimated by high-resolution MUSIC method under the situations with unknown signals number. Due to estimating the DOAs of coherent signals in beamspace, the precision of DOA estimation is enhanced, and the computation complexity is less than the element-space MUSIC method. The method's feasibility and robustness are analyzed and verified by the simulation data.