Localization of multiple ships using a vertical array in shallow water

The blind deconvolution employs conventional plane-wave beamforming using an array, selects a well-resolved angle of arrival for beam steering to estimate the phase component of an unknown source waveform, and then extracts the Green's function between the source and the array. In this letter, the approach is extended to multiple-ship scenarios in which the multipath arrivals from one ship are masked by other ships, adopting the basic concept of successive interference cancellation. Once individual Green's functions are available, the array invariant method based on the beam-time migration can be subsequently applied to estimate each source range. Simultaneous localization of two ships radiating broadband noise (200-900Hz) is demonstrated using a 16-element, 56-m long vertical array in approximately 100-m deep shallow water.