Fourth-Order Cumulant-Based Acoustic Imaging via Small-Aperture Acoustic Vector-Sensor Array
Xingchen Shen, Ming Bao, Zhifei Chen, Jing Zhao, Yan Gao · IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement · 2024
The acoustic vector-sensor array (AVSA) is in common use for measuring both the particle velocity and the sound pressure. This article presents a fourth-order cumulant-based acoustic imaging method for high spatial resolution using a small-aperture AVSA. The conventional beamforming (CBF) method is first applied in the vector sound field to form the vector-CBF (VCBF) algorithm, which is subsequently combined with the fourth-order cumulant matrix (FOCM) to lead to the cumulant-based vector-CBF (CUM-VCBF) for high-resolution acoustic imaging. The performance of the proposed algorithm is examined by analyzing the Cramér-Rao bound, the root-mean-square error (RMSE), and the mainlobe width. Simulation analysis is carried out in the cases of a single point source and two point sources. It is demonstrated that the proposed CUM-VCBF algorithm produces acoustic images with superior resolution and noise suppression compared to the conventional scalar and vector beamforming algorithms. Experimental measurements in a semi-anechoic chamber are further presented to demonstrate the best performance of the proposed CUM-VCBF for acoustic imaging.