A Conical Helix Array For Small Autonomous Underwater Platforms

Abstract

Due to the large diameters and high power consumption, the traditional arrays are difficult to be equipped on small autonomous underwater platforms. A conical helix array with small apertures is designed for the installation on the head of the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), which aims at the localization of underwater acoustic source. The design principle of the conical helix array is based on the completeness of the spherical harmonic functions. The conical helix array has 16 hydrophones, evenly distributed on two spiral curves. The localization of the acoustic source is realized by applying the spherical harmonics domain matching field processing. Finally, simulation results show that the proposed conical helix array can effectively achieve three-dimensional localization of the point source in the waveguide.