Journal of Computational Acoustics

Quiet submarine threats and high clutter in the littoral undersea environment increase the processing demands on beamforming arrays, particularly for applications which require in-array autonomous operation. Whereas traditional single-aperture beamforming approaches may falter, the Split-Aperture Conventional Beamforming (SA-CBF) algorithm can be used to meet stringent requirements for more precise bearing estimation. Moreover, by coupling each transducer node with a microprocessor, parallel processing of the split-aperture beamformer on a distributed system can glean advantages in execution speed, fault tolerance, scalability, and cost. In this paper, parallel algorithms for SA-CBF are introduced using coarse-grained and medium-grained forms of decomposition. Performance results from parallel and sequential algorithms are presented using a distributed system testbed comprised of a cluster of workstations connected by a high-speed network. The execution times, parallel efficiencies, and memory requirements of each parallel algorithm are presented and analyzed. The results of these analyses demonstrate that parallel in-array processing holds the potential to meet the needs of future advanced sonar beamforming algorithms in a scalable fashion.

A finite difference procedure for linear partial differential equations is shown to be optimal in the sense that the L² error norm obtained from interpolating an arbitrarily large set of solutions is minimized. The method is valid for any spatial lattice of discretizing points, however, formal 6th order error equivalence is proven for the special cases of the Helmholtz and Laplace equations for a square 2-D lattice.

This paper considers the noise field generated by surface random processes in an oceanic environment with a sediment layer possessing a continuously varying density and sound-speed profile. This model closely resembles the oceanic waveguide environment and therefore enables the simulation of surface noise generation. Many results of the noise field were generated, including the noise intensity distribution, vertical and horizontal correlations. It is demonstrated that the noise intensity may be affected by the stratification mainly through the continuous spectrum, in that the continuous spectrum is equally important as the normal modes in the present analysis. Moreover, the results for the correlations show that the noise field in the horizontal direction becomes more coherent when the noise sources are more correlated, while in the vertical direction, the results tend to reverse. The horizontal correlations of the noise field due to surface random sources with nonisotropic power spectrum, such as nonisotropic Gaussian and Pierson–Moskowitz, were generated and analyzed.

In predicting wave propagations in either direction, the size of the angle of propagation plays an important role; thus, the concept of wide-angle is introduced. Most existing acoustic propagation prediction models do have the capability of treating the wide-angle but the treatment, in practice, is vertical. This is desirable for solving two-dimensional (range and depth) problems. In extending the two-dimensional treatment to 3 dimensions, even though the wide-angle capability is maintained in most 3D models, it is still vertical. Owing to the need of a wide-angle capability in the azimuth direction, this paper formulates an azimuthal wide-angle wave equation whose theoretical development is presented. An illustrative example is included to demonstrate the need for such azimuthal wide-angle capability. Also, a comparison is shown between results using narrow-angle and wide-angle equations separately.