Single hydrophone passive source range and depth estimation in shallow water

Abstract

In this paper, the problem of underwater acoustic source localization using a single hydrophone is considered. The transmitted signal arrives at the hydrophone through the direct path and surface and bottom reflected paths. These multipath signals are used to define virtual hydrophones above the ocean surface and below the bottom for the purposes of source localization. An autocorrelation estimator is first used to estimate the delays of the reflected signals with respect to the direct path signal. Then a least squares estimator is applied to the time difference of arrival (TDOA) estimates of the three hydrophones to determine the source location. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated using the underwater data from the SWellEx-96 experiments which were conducted in San Diego, California.