Experimental Results for Direction of Arrival Estimation with a Single Acoustic Vector Sensor in Shallow Water

We study the performances of several computationally efficient and simple techniques for estimating direction of arrival (DOA) of an underwater acoustic source using a single acoustic vector sensor (AVS) in shallow water. Underwater AVS is a compact device, which consists of one hydrophone and three accelerometers in a packaged form, measuring scalar pressure and three-dimensional acceleration simultaneously at a single position. A very controlled experimental setup is prepared to test how well-known techniques, namely, arctan-based, intensity-based, time domain beamforming, and frequency domain beamforming methods, perform in estimating DOA of a source in different circumstances. Experimental results reveal that for almost all cases beamforming techniques perform best. Moreover, arctan-based method, which is the simplest of all, provides satisfactory results for practical purposes.