Noise suppression using the coherent onion peeler

Abstract

An innovative noise suppression algorithm, called the coherent onion peeler (COP) (patent detained) is derived by minimizing the error in the coherent subtraction of the data from a single plane wave model. The COP solution "collapses" for all beamforming algorithms to the same solution at the complex hydrophone FFT level. Thus, any beamformer can be applied to the residual FFTs after the COP has been applied. The COP is applied to the strongest interferer first and the residual FFTs represent the acoustic field with this interferer coherently "peeled back" like the outer skin of an onion. This procedure can be repeated any number of times to coherently suppress the noise from all interferers present. A new nonadaptive beamformer is developed that "blends" together the best beam pattern properties of conventional beamforming (CBF) near array design frequency and the generalized fourier integral method (GFIM) at very low frequencies (VLF). In between these frequency extremes, the GFIM-CBF Blend (patent pending) (G-C Blend) is a frequency-dependent weighted average of both individual beamformers. COP and G-C Blend are applied to the broadband noise emitted by the tow ship, which severely degrades the performance of the towed array; COP reduced this broadband noise by over 19 dB in a single pass.