Parameter estimation of underwater moving sources by using matched Wigner transform

According to the acoustical Doppler effect, an improved narrow-band technique is proposed to estimate underwater source's motion parameters including speed, closest distance, rest frequency, and closest point of approach (CPA) time, by using a single receiving sensor. First, the matched Wigner transform (MWT), which produces a time-frequency distribution (TFD) with optimal energy concentration and without inner artifacts for a high-order polynomial phase signal, is defined. On the basis of the MWT, a method is developed for the accurate instantaneous frequency (IF) estimation of Doppler signal. Moreover, we deduce that the Wigner-Ville distribution of the Doppler signal has a peak at the center of the TFD. Thereafter, the CPA time is directly estimated. When the CPA time is obtained, the other motion parameters can be easily estimated by using a simplified amplitude weighted nonlinear least-squares method, which fits the IF estimates to the predicted Doppler shift. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed scheme is validated by using underwater acoustic data. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.