Properties of the Acoustic Vector Field near the Underwater Planar Cavity Baffle and Its Application

Hongyue Chen,Zhongrui Zhu,Desen Yang

doi:10.3390/jmse10020138

Abstract

In order to apply the acoustic vector hydrophone on a ship, the properties of the acoustic vector field near the underwater planar cavity baffle are studied based on the Euler description and Lagrange description. The acoustic vector field is calculated based on the transfer matrices and matched boundary conditions. It is shown that the interference structure appears in the acoustic field. In particular, the particle velocity direction and intensity vector cannot directly reflect the azimuth of the source. The points at which the particle velocity is zero are saddle points and nodal points in the particle velocity vector field. Moreover, the particle motion is generally an ellipse near the planar cavity baffle. Furthermore, this paper defines a parameter that can fully represent the particle motion, and the direction of arrival (DOA) can be estimated using a single acoustic vector hydrophone using this parameter in some cases. At the end, the validity of the theoretical calculation and the method of using the parameter to estimate the DOA are verified experimentally.

Highlights

An acoustic vector hydrophone can simultaneously acquire the pressure and two or three orthogonal components of the particle velocity at one point in the marine environment
Many scholars have done a great deal of research related to the direction of arrival (DOA) estimation, and the results show that acoustic vector hydrophones have advantages in the estimation and give rise to an improved resolution by using the particle velocity information [4,5,6,7]
The receiving system consists of acoustic vector hydrophone, underwater planar cavity baffle was carried out in the anechoic tank of the Acoustic Sciamplifier and signal conditioning module, collector, and laptop

Summary

Introduction

An acoustic vector hydrophone can simultaneously acquire the pressure and two or three orthogonal components of the particle velocity at one point in the marine environment. Many scholars have done a great deal of research related to the DOA estimation, and the results show that acoustic vector hydrophones have advantages in the estimation and give rise to an improved resolution by using the particle velocity information [4,5,6,7]. Most of these studies have only considered acoustic vector hydrophones used in free space. The application of the acoustic vector hydrophone in the presence of the baffle has become a critical problem

Methods

Results

Conclusion