Towed Array Shape Estimation Using Acoustic and Heading Data

The performance of direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation is affected by the imprecise knowledge of the array shape. When a straight line array is towed by a ship, it is hard to keep the shape. Hence the shape of towed array must be estimated to avoid performance degradation. In this paper, we propose a new towed array shape estimation method combining eigenvector method of acoustic data with interpolation fitting method of heading data, and test its feasibility by experiment data conducted in the sea. Conventional beamforming (CBF) is performed for performance comparison of the traditional straight line assumption and the estimated shape, the results prove the effectiveness of the algorithm.