An Improved Processing Chain for Matched Field Tracking
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Matched Field Processing (MFP) for range/depth source localisation has been applied successfully to vertical arrays of hydrophones for more than 10 years. However, these arrays are awkward to deploy. On the other hand, horizontal towed arrays offer little or no vertical aperture, making range and depth localisation an inspiring challenge. This shortcoming, combined with the frequent problem of environmental mismatch and hostile conditions of shallow water (increased noise levels and interfering sources) results in severe degradation of the MFP ambiguity surfaces, thus preventing source localisation. This paper reports on our research effort for the application of MFP to short towed arrays (32λ at 2kHz). A realistic scenario has been simulated, involving a target source and additional interfering noise sources. A normal mode model is used for the modelling, and environmental mismatch is introduced. Inverse beamforming is used to remove the interfering sources at hydrophone level, prior to MFP. A multiple target tracker is then used to distinguish sidelobes from actual target detections over a series of snapshots. Application of this method on simulated data shows encouraging results.
TNO Identifier
186406
Publisher
TNO
Source title
Proceedings of the Seventh European Conference on Underwater Acoustics, ECUA 2004, 5-8 July, 2004, Delft, The Netherlands
Place of publication
The Hague
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