Source tracking with linear and circular compact vector sensor arrays

Abstract

Vector sensors are directional acoustic sensors that can make collocated measurements of both the acoustic pressure and the particle motion (in general velocity or acceleration). Combining the particle acceleration or velocity measurements with pressure, it is possible to estimate the intensity of the acoustic field, which in turn is related to the direction of the net acoustic energy propagation. Recently, several novel beamforming and array processing methods have been proposed that enable the development of compact linear and circular vector sensor arrays with inter-sensor spacing much less than the traditional spacing of one-half the design wavelength. These methods, albeit differing in implementation, both rely on the extraction and processing of the so-called “acoustic modes” of the sound field and have shown to be successful in estimating source direction relative to the array in a 2-D setting. The work described here, builds on previous results and extends the direction-of-arrival estimation methods to source tracking. Several algorithms developed for this purpose and implemented on both array types are introduced. The proposed approaches are experimentally validated using air-borne and underwater sources for compact pressure and 1-D vector sensor arrays.