Multi-rank processing for passive ranging in underwater acoustic environments subject to spatial coherence loss

• Published in: 2011 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) pp. 2692 - 2695
• Main Authors: Ge, Hongya, Kirsteins, Ivars P.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.05.2011
• Subjects: Array signal processing; Arrays; Coherence; Data models; Distance measurement; Parameter Estimation Performance; Passive Source Localization; Signal to noise ratio; Spatial coherence
• ISBN: 9781457705380; 1457705389
• ISSN: 1520-6149
• DOI: 10.1109/ICASSP.2011.5947040

In this work we derive the maximum likelihood estimator for passive wavefront curvature ranging systems operating in environments subject to a spatial coherence loss. As a consequence of the spatial coherence loss, the optimum processor is no longer a rank-1 matched filter and now instead involves a multi-rank weighted combination of the data based on the coherence matrix eigenvectors and eigenvalues. We also establish an interesting connection of our proposed multi-rank processor to the conventional rank-1 processor, and to the non-coherence sub-array processor, under different operating conditions. A comparative study is carried out in evaluating the performance of the proposed processors.