Nearfield discrimination capabilities of a line array
A. J. Rockmore, N.J. Bershad · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1975
This paper studies the ability of a line array to discriminate between two nearfield acoustic point sources from the viewpoint of statistical hypothesis testing. The optimum binary detectors are presented for noise alone and noise plus point source interference environments. Under a small signal-to-noise power ratio assumption, general expressions are presented for the performance of these detectors. For a uniformly spaced line array with a large aperture (compared to the source range) in a spatially white noise environment, the detector performance is shown to be linearly proportional to signal-to-noise ratio, inversely proportional to hydrophone spacing and proportional to a factor involving the ratio of the separation of the two sources to the acoustic wavelength. When operating in a noise plus interference environment, the performance of this detector is severely degraded. The optimum detector for noise plus interference is shown to perform significantly better. Subject Classification: 60.20, 60.30.