Ca. Zala et al., EFFICIENT ESTIMATION OF THE PROBABILITY THAT A SOURCE TRACK IS EXAMINED IN A MATCHED-FIELD PROCESSING TRACKING ALGORITHM, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 103(1), 1998, pp. 374-379
Tracking techniques may be used to reduce the ambiguity of an acoustic
source's position in matched-field processing, particularly for low s
ignal-to-noise ratios. An efficient tracking algorithm was recently de
scribed, in which the performance would be comparable to that of an ex
haustive tracker; that is, the probability that the source track is ex
amined is close to unity for cases of interest, The current paper desc
ribes an efficient technique to estimate the probability that the sour
ce track is examined. The procedure involves the use of noise-only dat
a to define statistical thresholds for the strongest peaks in the ambi
guity surface. Once these thresholds are defined, the required probabi
lities may be estimated by evaluating the ambiguity function for signa
l-plus-noise data within a small region surrounding the known sourer l
ocation, and identifying any peaks exceeding the thresholds. Results o
f simulations obtained for a slanted array indicate that this approach
provides an effective way to estimate the probability that the source
track is examined.