Beam patterns of an underwater acoustic vector hydrophone located near a reflecting boundary

Abstract

A vector hydrophone consists of two or three spatially collocated but orthogonally oriented velocity hydrophones plus an optional collocated pressure hydrophone. A vector hydrophone may form azimuth-elevation beams that are invariant with respect to the source frequencies, bandwidths and radial location (in the near field or the far field). This paper characterizes the spatial matched filter beam patterns (i.e. fixed or conventional or maximum signal-to-noise ratio beam patterns) associated with a single underwater acoustic vector hydrophone located near a reflecting boundary. Furthermore, the beam pattern's main peak deviation is investigated for different constructions.