Improved Underwater Single-Vector Acoustic DOA Estimation via Vector Convolution Preprocessing

Remote passive sonar detection with underwater acoustic vector sensor (UAVS) has attracted increasing attention due to its merit in measuring the full sound field information. However, the accurate estimation of the direction-of-arrival (DOA) remains a challenging problem, especially under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions. In this paper, a novel convolution (COV)-based single-vector acoustic preprocessing method is proposed on the basis of the single-vector acoustic preprocessing model. In view of the theoretical analysis of the classical single-vector acoustic DOA estimation method, the principle of preprocessing can be described as “to achieve an improved denoising performance in the constraint of equivalent amplitude gain and phase response.” This can be naturally guaranteed by our proposed COV method. In addition, the upper bound with matched filtering (MF) preprocessing is provided in the consideration of the optimal linear signal processing for weak signal detection under Gaussian noise. Numerical analyses demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed preprocessing method with both vector array signal processing-based and intensity-based methods. Experimental verification conducted in South China Sea further verifies the effectiveness of our approach for practical applications. This work can lay a solid foundation in improving underwater remote vector acoustic DOA estimation under low SNR, and can provide important guidance for future research work.