Azimuth Tracking of Underwater Moving Sound Source Based on Time Delay Estimation Using Hydrophone Array

Hydrophones array represents underwater sensors that can be used to detect azimuth of target by obtain the time delay information. Success rate of time delay estimation is influenced by characteristics of sound propagation like reflection, scattering, and reverberation. Simulation and experiment of hydrophone array in real environment aimed to analyze performance of the cross correlation (CC) and generalized cross correlation with the phase transform (PHAT) weighting to estimate time delay between two signals. The objective of the simulation is to know the influence of time delay against various SNR by CC and PHAT algorithm. The algorithm then tested in a pond to detect stationary and moving position of sound source. Result of the simulation and experiment in real environment which is considered as scatter condition showed that PHAT performed better than CC. In moving sound experiments, tracking the azimuth of the mini vessel can be done by time delay estimation using PHAT.