THE ESTIMATION OF THE SHAPE OF AN ARRAY USING A HIDDEN MARKOV MODEL

In this paper a hidden Markov Model (HMM) technique for the estimation of the shape of a towed array is presented. It is assumed that there is a farfield source radiating sound containing possibly weak spectral lines. The technique uses either the Fourier coefficients at a given frequency computed from a single time block or the maximal eigenvector of a sample spectral covariance matrix. The technique is illustrated using several simulations. The results of these simulations indicate t he HMM technique yields shape and bearing estimates more accurate than those provided by a maximum likelihood array shape estimation techniq ue.