Research on high-precision DOA estimation of a vector sensor under baffle conditions

When a vector sensor is installed on an underwater carrier to detect and position targets, the measuring results will be affected by the acoustic scattering of the carrier, resulting in the direction distortion of the receiving channels and the decline in accuracy of the DOA estimation. With a focus on the aforementioned problem, firstly the influences of diffraction by a finite cylinder under baffle conditions on the vector sensor were calculated using boundary element method (BEM); then according to the mapping relationship between the measured direction by the vector sensor and the real target direction at different incident frequencies and installing positions, the inversion method to transform the measured direction to the real target direction is proposed and discussed in further detail in the paper. The inversion method requires prior knowledge of the incident frequency, the installation position of the vector sensor, and as a result requires a large amount of calculations. Simulation results show that the inversion method enables a high-precision DOA estimation of a vector sensor under baffle conditions.