Journal of Marine Science and Application [Ocean Acoustics]
Alireza Bolghasi, Parviz Ghadimi, Mohammad A. Feizi Chekab
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2016(No. 3): 275-287
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The aim of the present study is to improve the capabilities and precision of a recently introduced Sea Surface Acoustic Simulator (SSAS) developed based on optimization of the Helmholtz-Kirchhoff-Fresnel (HKF) method. The improved acoustic simulator, hereby known as theModified SSAS (MSSAS), is capable of determining sound scattering from the sea surface and includes an extended Hall-Novarini model and optimized HKF method. The extended Hall-Novarini model is used for consideringthe effects of sub-surface bubbles over a wider range of radii of sub-surface bubbles compared to the previous SSAS version. Furthermore, MSSAS has the capability of making a three-dimensional simulation of scattered sound from the rough bubbly sea surface with less error than that of the Critical Sea Tests (CST) experiments. Also, it presents scattered pressure levels from the rough bubbly sea surface based on various incident angles of sound. Wind speed, frequency, incident angle, and pressure level of the sound source are considered as input data, and scattered pressure levels and scattering coefficients are provided. Finally, different parametric studies were conducted on wind speeds, frequencies, and incident angles to indicate that MSSAS is quite capable of simulating sound scattering from the rough bubbly sea surface, according to the scattering mechanisms determined by Ogden and Erskine.Therefore, it is concluded that MSSAS is valid for both scattering mechanisms and the transition region between them that are defined by Ogden and Erskine.

Yang Yang1,2, Xiukun Li1,2
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2016(No. 2): 201-207
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Separation of the components of rigid acoustic scattering by underwater objects is essential in obtaining the structural characteristics of such objects. To overcome the problem of rigid structures appearing to have the same spectral structure in the time domain, time-frequency Blind Source Separation (BSS) can be used in combination with image morphology to separate the rigid scattering components of different objects. Based on a highlight model, the separation of the rigid scattering structure of objects with time-frequency distribution is deduced. Using a morphological filter, different characteristics in a Wigner-Ville Distribution (WVD) observed for single auto term and cross terms can be simplified to remove any cross-term interference. By selecting time and frequency points of the auto terms signal, the accuracy of BSS can be improved. A simulation experimental has been used to analyze the feasibility of the new method, with changing the pulse width of the transmitted signal, the relative amplitude and the time delay parameter. And simulation results show that the new method can not only separate rigid scattering components, but can also separate the components when elastic scattering and rigid scattering exist at the same time. Experimental results confirm that the new method can be used in separating the rigid scattering structure of underwater objects.

Parviz Ghadimi, Alireza Bolghasi and Mohammad A. Feizi Chekab
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2015(No. 2): 113-125
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In this paper, sound scattering from the sea surface in the Persian Gulf region is investigated. Chapman-Harris and Ogden-Erskine empirical relations coupled with perturbation theory are implemented. Based on the Ogden and Erskine’s experiments, sound scattering from the sea surface has three different regimes in which two mechanisms of surface roughness and subsurface bubble clouds are involved. Ogden-Erskine’s scattering relation which consists of perturbation theory and Chapman-Harris’s scattering terms are verified by the experimental data of Critical Sea Tests 7. Subsequently, wind speed in the Persian Gulf is provided based on three data bases of Arzanah station, ERA40, and PERGOS. Accordingly, surface scattering strength in the Persian Gulf region is calculated at different grazing angles, frequencies and provided wind speeds. Based on the resulted values of scattering strength, scattered intensity from the sea surface is also studied. These studies indicate that both scattering strength and scattered intensity generally increase as grazing angle, frequency and wind speed increase.

Xiukun Li, Mingye Liu and Shu Jiang
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2015(No. 2): 202-207
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In this paper, a new method based on morphologic research named reconstruction cross-component removal(RCCR) is developed to analyze geometrical scattering waves of an underwater target. Combining the origin of the cross-component in Wigner-Ville distribution, the highlight model of target echoes and time-frequency features of linear frequency-modulated signal can remove cross-components produced by multiple component signals in Wigner-Ville distribution and recover the auto-components of output signals. This method is used in experimental data processing, which can strengthen the real geometric highlights, and restrain the cross components. It is demonstrated that this method is helpful to analyze the geometrical scattering waves, providingan effective solution to underwater target detection and recognition.

Hongyang Chen, Qi Li and Dejiang Shang
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2014(No. 4): 437-448
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In order to predict acoustic radiation from a structure in waveguide, a method based on wave superposition is proposed, in which the free-space Green’s function is used to match the strength of equivalent sources. In addition, in order to neglect the effect of sound reflection from boundaries, necessary treatment is conducted, which makes the method more efficient. Moreover, this method is combined with the sound propagation algorithms to predict the sound radiated from a cylindrical shell in waveguide. Numerical simulations show the effect of how reflections can be neglected if the distance between the structure and the boundary exceeds the maximum linear dimension of the structure. It also shows that the reflection from the bottom of the waveguide can be approximated by plane wave conditionally. The proposed method is more robust and efficient in computation, which can be used to predict the acoustic radiation in waveguide.

Xiukun Li, Xiangxia Meng, Hang Liu and Mingye Liu
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2014(No. 2): 218-224
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In underwater target detection, the bottom reverberation has some of the same properties as the target echo, which has a great impact on the performance. It is essential to study the difference between target echo and reverberation. In this paper, based on the unique advantage of human listening ability on objects distinction, the Gammatone filter is taken as the auditory model. In addition, time-frequency perception features and auditory spectral features are extracted for active sonar target echo and bottom reverberation separation. The features of the experimental data have good concentration characteristics in the same class and have a large amount of differences between different classes, which shows that this method can effectively distinguish between the target echo and reverberation.

R. Sathishkumar
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2013(No. 3): 361-365
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In this study, a 2 kHz Tonpilz projector was designed using a Terfenol-D and modeled in ATILA. For the purpose of modeling studies, it has been determined that a radiating head mass exhibits better transmitting current response (TCR) at 136 mm diameter, where the resonance occurs at 2.4 kHz and the peak value of 118 dB re 1 ?Pa/A at 1 m occurs at 12 kHz. Also bolt at a 46 mm distance from the center of the head mass offers resonance at 2.4 kHz, and the peak value of 115.3 dB re 1 ?Pa/A at 1m occurs at 11.5 kHz. This optimized design is fabricated and molded with polyurethane of 3 mm thickness. The prototype was tested at the Acoustic Test Facility (ATF) of National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) for its underwater performances. Based on the result, the fundamental resonance was determined to be 2.18 kHz and the peak value of TCR of 182 dB re 1 ?Pa/A at 1m occurs at 14 kHz. The maximum value of the RS was found to be –190 dB re 1V/?Pa at 1m at a frequency of 2.1 kHz.

F.Y. Wu, Y.H. Zhou, F. Tong and R. Kastner
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2013(No. 2): 228-234
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Underwater acoustic channels are recognized for being one of the most difficult propagation media due to considerable difficulties such as: multipath, ambient noise, time-frequency selective fading. The exploitation of sparsity contained in underwater acoustic channels provides a potential solution to improve the performance of underwater acoustic channel estimation. Compared with the classic l0 and l1 norm constraint LMS algorithms, the p-norm-like (lp) constraint LMS algorithm proposed in our previous investigation exhibits better sparsity exploitation performance at the presence of channel variations, as it enables the adaptability to the sparseness by tuning of p parameter. However, the decimal exponential calculation associated with the p-norm-like constraint LMS algorithm poses considerable limitations in practical application. In this paper, a simplified variant of the p-norm-like constraint LMS was proposed with the employment of Newton iteration method to approximate the decimal exponential calculation. Numerical simulations and the experimental results obtained in physical shallow water channels demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method compared to traditional norm constraint LMS algorithms.

Xiukun Li and Zhi Xia
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2013(No. 2): 235-239
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The critical technical problem of underwater bottom object detection is founding a stable feature space for echo signals classification. The past literatures more focus on the characteristics of object echoes in feature space and reverberation is only treated as interference. In this paper, reverberation is considered as a kind of signal with steady characteristic, and the clustering of reverberation in frequency discrete wavelet transform (FDWT) feature space is studied. In order to extract the identifying information of echo signals, feature compression and cluster analysis are adopted in this paper, and the criterion of separability between object echoes and reverberation is given. The experimental data processing results show that reverberation has steady pattern in FDWT feature space which differs from that of object echoes. It is proven that there is separability between reverberation and object echoes.

Zhifei Chen, Hong Hou, Jianhua Yang, Jincai Sun and Qian Wang
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2013(No. 2): 240-244
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The double pulse sources method (DPS) is presented for linear track estimation in this work. In the field of noise identification of underwater moving target, the Doppler will distort the frequency and amplitude of the radiated noise. To eliminate this, the track estimation is necessary. In the DPS method, the bearings of two sinusoidal pulse sources installed in the moving target are estimated through baseline positioning method in the first step. Meanwhile, the emitted and recorded time of each pulse are also acquired. Then the linear track parameters will be achieved based on the geometry pattern with the help of double sources spacing. The simulated results confirm that the DPS improves the performance of the previously presented double source spacing method. The simulated experiments were carried out using a moving battery car to further evaluate its performance. When the target is 40~60m away, the experiment results show that biases of track azimuth and abeam distance of DPS are under 0.6o and 3.4m, respectively. And the average deviation of estimated velocity is around 0.25m/s.

Liang Sun and Hong Hou
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2013(No. 1): 122-125
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Based on existing low-frequency water-filled impedance tube testing facilities, which is a part of the Low Frequency Facility of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Beijing, an improved water-filled pulse tube method is presented in this short paper. This proposed study is significantly different from the conventional pulse tube method because of the capability for a single plane damped sine pulse wave to generate in the water-filled pulse tube with a regular waveform and short duration time of about 1ms. During the generation process of the pulse, an inverse filter principle was adopted to compensate the transducer response. The effect of the characteristics of tube termination can be eliminated through the generation process of the pulse. Reflection coefficient from a water/air interface was measured to verify the proposed method. When compared with the expected theoretical values, a relatively good agreement can be obtained in the low frequency range of 500–2 000 Hz.

Zhuang Li, Gang Qiao, Zongxin Sun, Haiyang Zhao and Ran Guo
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2012(No. 2): 251-257
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The existence of a multi-path channel under the water greatly decreases the accuracy of the short baseline positioning system. In this paper, the application of a time reversal mirror to the short baseline positioning system was investigated. The time reversal mirror technique allowed the acoustic signal to better focus in an unknown environment, which effectively reduced the expansion of multi-path acoustic signals as well as improved the signal focusing. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the time reversal operator greatly increased and could be obtained by ensonifying the water. The technique was less affected by the environment and therefore more applicable to a complex shallow water environment. Numerical simulations and pool experiments were used to demonstrate the efficiency of this technique.

Junjie Zhang, Chunhui Yuan, Xianming Zhu and Tianyun Li
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2012(No. 2): 258-264
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A general method was proposed to study the sound and vibration of a finite cylindrical shell with elastic theory. This method was developed through comprehensive analysis of the uncoupled Helmholtz equation obtained by the decomposition of elastic equations and the structure of the solution of a finite cylindrical shell analyzed by thin shell theory. The proposed method is theoretically suitable for arbitrary thickness of the shell and any frequency. Also, the results obtained through the method can be used to determine the range of application of the thin shell theory. Furthermore, the proposed method can deal with the problems limited by the thin shell theory. Additionally, the method can be suitable for several types of complex cylindrical shell such as the ring-stiffened cylindrical shell, damped cylindrical shell, and double cylindrical shell.

Yiwang Huang, Qunyan Ren and Ting Li
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2012(No. 1): 119-125
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Spatial correlation of sound pressure and particle velocity of the surface noise in horizontally stratified media was demonstrated, with directional noise sources uniformly distributed on the ocean surface. In the evaluation of particle velocity, plane wave approximation was applied to each incident ray. Due to the equivalence of the sound source correlation property and its directivity, solutions for the spatial correlation of the field were transformed into the integration of the coherent function generated by a single directional source. As a typical horizontally stratified media, surface noise in a perfect waveguide was investigated. Correlation coefficients given by normal mode and geometric models show satisfactory agreement. Also, the normalized covariance between sound pressure and the vertical component of particle velocity is proportional to acoustic absorption coefficient, while that of the surface noise in semi-infinitely homogeneous space is zero.

Gang Qiao, Wei Wang, Ran Guo, Rehan Khan and Yue Wang
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2012(No. 1): 126-133
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The major constraint on the performance of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based underwater acoustic (UWA) communication is to keep subcarriers orthogonal. In this paper, Doppler estimation and the respective compensation technique along with various diversity techniques were deliberated for OFDM-based systems best suited for underwater wireless information exchange. In practice, for mobile communication, adjustment and tuning of transducers in order to get spatial diversity is extremely difficult. Considering the relatively low coherence bandwidth in UWA, the frequency diversity design with the Doppler compensation function was elaborated here. The outfield experiments of mobile underwater acoustic communication (UWAC) based on OFDM were carried out with 0.17 bit/(s?Hz) spectral efficiency. The validity and the dependability of the scheme were also analyzed.

Xiaohua Li, Yaan Li, Lin Cui and Wangsheng Liu
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2011(No. 4): 502-509
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The performance of a sonar system is closely related to the marine environment and the target characteristics. When dealing with the echoes of a traditional active sonar system, the sonar designers often do not take into account the influence of the environmental information and prior knowledge perceived by sonar receivers, making it difficult to obtain desired processing results. Based on the basic principle and key technology of sonar, this paper proposed a cognition-based intelligent sonar system in theory--cognitive sonar. Cognitive sonar is capable of jointly optimizing the transmission waveform and receiver according to the changes of environment so that its detection and identification performance can be significantly improved.

Qunyan Ren, Jean Pierre Hermand and Shengchun Piao
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2011(No. 4): 495-501
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Compared to a scalar pressure sensor, a vector sensor can provide a higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) signal and more detailed information on the sound field. Study on vector sensors and their applications have become a hot topic. Research on the representation of a vector field is highly relevant for extending the scope of vector sensor technology. This paper discusses the range-frequency distribution of the vector field due to a broadband acoustic source moving in a shallow-water waveguide as the self noise of a surface ship, and the vector extension of the waveguide impulse response measured over a limited frequency range using an active source of known waveform. From theory analysis and numerical simulation, the range-frequency representation of a vector field exhibits an interference structure qualitatively similar to that of the corresponding pressure field but, being quantitatively different, provides additional information on the waveguide, especially through the vertical component. For the range-frequency representation, physical quantities that can better exhibit the interference characteristics of the waveguide are the products of pressure and particle velocity and of the pressure and pressure gradient. An image processing method to effectively detect and isolate the individual striations from an interference structure was reviewed briefly. The representation of the vector impulse response was discussed according to two different measurement systems, also known as particle velocity and pressure gradient. The vector impulse response representation can not only provide additional information from pressure only but even more than that of the range-frequency representation.

Xianzhong Wang, Xiongliang Yao, Qiangyong Wang and Shuai L
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2011(No. 4): 490-494
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Based on wave theory, blocking mass impeding propagation of flexural waves was analyzed with force excitation applied on a ship pedestal. The analysis model of a complex structure was developed by combining statistical energy analysis and the finite element method. Based on the hybrid FE-SEA method, the vibro-acoustic response of a complex structure was solved. Then, the sound radiation of a cylindrical shell model influenced by blocking mass was calculated in mid/high frequency. The result shows that blocking mass has an obvious effect on impeding propagation. The study provides a theoretical and experimental basis for application of the blocking mass to structure-borne sound propagation control.

Zhenhua Xu, Jianguo Huang, Hai Huang and Qunfei Zhang
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2011(No. 3): 358-363
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In order to solve the distributed detection fusion problem of underwater target detection, when the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the acoustic channel is low, a new strategy for united detection fusion and communication using multiple sensors was proposed. The performance of detection fusion was studied and compared based on the Neyman-Pearson principle when the binary phase shift keying (BPSK) and on-off keying (OOK) modes were used by the local sensors. The comparative simulation and analysis between the optimal likelihood ratio test and the proposed strategy was completed, and both the theoretical analysis and simulation indicate that using the proposed new strategy could improve the detection performance effectively. In theory, the proposed strategy of united detection fusion and communication is of great significance to the establishment of an underwater target detection system.

Danzhu Yu, Xiongliang Yao and Shaoshi Dai
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2011(No. 3): 364-370
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Experiments involving a sonar platform with a sound absorption wedge were carried out for the purpose of obtaining the low frequency acoustic characteristics. Acoustic characteristics of a sonar platform model with a sound absorption wedge were measured, and the effects of different wedge laid areas on platform acoustic characteristic were tested. Vibration acceleration and self-noise caused by model vibration were measured in four conditions: 0%, 36%, 60%, and 100% of wedge laid area when the sonar platform was under a single frequency excitation force. An experiment was performed to validate a corresponding numerical calculation. The numerical vibration characteristics of platform area were calculated by the finite element method, and self-noise caused by the vibration in it was predicted by an experiential formula. The conclusions prove that the numerical calculation method can partially replace the experimental process for obtaining vibration and sound characteristics.

Tiedong Zhang, Wenjing Zeng and Lei Wan
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2011(No. 3): 371-376
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A method of underwater simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) based on forward-looking sonar was proposed in this paper. Positions of objects were obtained by the forward-looking sonar, and an improved association method based on an ant colony algorithm was introduced to estimate the positions. In order to improve the precision of the positions, the extended Kalman filter (EKF) was adopted. The presented algorithm was tested in a tank, and the maximum estimation error of SLAM gained was 0.25 m. The tests verify that this method can maintain better association efficiency and reduce navigation error.

Journal of Marine Science and Application,2011(No. 2): 226-232
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An array extension method in a noisy environment was proposed to improve angular resolution and array gain. The proposed method combines the FOC (fourth-order cumulants) technique with the ETAM (extended towed array measurements) method to extend array aperture and suppress Gaussian noise. First, successive measurements of a virtual uniform linear array were constructed by applying fourth-order cumulants to measurements of uniform linear array; Gaussian noise in these measurements was also eliminated. Then, the array was extended by compensating phase differences using the ETAM method. Finally, the synthetic aperture was extended further by the fourth-order cumulants technique. The proposed FOC-ETAM-FOC method not only improves angular resolution and array gain, but also effectively suppresses Gaussian noise. Furthermore, it inherits the advantages of the ETAM method. Simulation results showed that the FOC-ETAM-FOC method achieved better angular resolution and array gain than the ETAM method. Furthermore this method outperforms the ETAM method in Gaussian noise environment.

Journal of Marine Science and Application,2011(No. 2): 233-239
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The double-peak characteristic of underwater radiated noise in the near field on top of the target submarine was analyzed in depth on the basis of submarine test data on the sea. The contribution of three major noise sources to the radiated noise of a submarine were compared and analyzed, and emphasis was put on the original source, production mechanism, and their correlative characteristics. On the basis of analysis on underwater tracking and pass through characteristics of the target submarine, the double-peak phenomenon was reasonably interpreted. Furthermore, the correctness of the theoretical interpretation was verified adequately in real submarine tests. The double-peak phenomenon indicates that the space distributing character on submarine radiated noise are both asymmetrical with time and space, whereas that is provided with directivity. Studying the double-peak phenomenon in depth has important reference value and meaning in engineering practice for understanding the underwater radiated noise field of submarines.

Shengqi Yu, Yiwang Huang and Weiqi Jiao
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2011(No. 1): 98-104
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Acoustic vector sensor consists of pressure and particle velocity sensors, which measure the three-dimensional acoustic particle velocity, as well as the pressure at one location at the same time. By preserving the amplitude and phase information of the pressure and particle velocity, they possess a number of advantages over traditional scalar sensors. Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain (which is often called array gain) is one of such advantages and is always interested by all of us. But it is not unchangeable if the spatial correlation of the noise field varies. Much more important, it is difficult to be given if the noise becomes complex. In this paper, spatial correlation of the vector field of isotropic volume-noise and surface-generated noise has been introduced briefly. Based on the results, the combined SNR output of a vector linear array is investigated and the maximum gain is given in the specified noise. Computer simulation shows that the output of one array in the same noise is not the same in different gestures. And then we find the best gesture through SNR calculation and obtain the biggest gain, which has important meaning to guide how to deploy an array in practice. We also should use the array with respect to the characteristics of the real ambient noise, especially in anisotropic noise field.

Yinbing Zhang, Junwei Zhao, Yecai Guo and Jinming Li
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2011(No. 1): 113-120
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The problem of blind adaptive equalization of underwater single-input multiple-output (SIMO) acoustic channels was analyzed by using the linear prediction method. Minimum mean square error (MMSE) blind equalizers with arbitrary delay were described on a basis of channel identification. Two methods for calculating linear MMSE equalizers were proposed. One was based on full channel identification and realized using RLS adaptive algorithms, and the other was based on the zero-delay MMSE equalizer and realized using LMS and RLS adaptive algorithms, respectively. Performance of the three proposed algorithms and comparison with two existing zero-forcing (ZF) equalization algorithms were investigated by simulations utilizing two underwater acoustic channels. The results show that the proposed algorithms are robust enough to channel order mismatch. They have almost the same performance as the corresponding ZF algorithms under a high signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio and better performance under a low SNR.

Jun-jie Zhang, Tian-yun Li, Wen-bing Ye and Xiang Zhu
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2010(No. 4): 431-438
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The insertion loss of acoustic radiation of damped cylindrical shell described by 3-D elasticity Navier equations under radial harmonic applied load in fluid is presented. The classical integral transform technique, potential theory and Lamè resolution are used to derive the solutions of Navier equations. The higher precision inversion computation is introduced to solve the linear equations. Comparing with acoustic radiation of one-layer cylindrical shell, the influence of thickness, mass density, dilatational wave loss factor and Young’s modulus of damping material and circumferential mode number of the cylindrical shell on the insertion loss is concluded. The theoretical model in the paper can be used to deal with the arbitrary thickness and any frequency of the coated layer in dynamic problem. The conclusions may be of theoretical reference to the application of damping material to noise and vibration control of submarines and underwater pipes.

Guan-cheng Lin,Ya-an Li and Bei-li Jin
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2010(No. 4): 439-444
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An approach was proposed for optimizing beamforming that was based on Support Vector Regression (SVR). After studying the mathematical principal of the SVR algorithm and its primal cost function, the modified cost function was first applied to uniform array beamforming, and then the corresponding parameters of the beamforming were optimized. The framework of SVR uniform array beamforming was then established. Simulation results show that SVR beamforming can not only approximate the performance of conventional beamforming in the area without noise and with small data sets, but also improve the generalization ability and reduce the computation burden. Also, the side lobe level of both linear and circular arrays by the SVR algorithm is improved sharply through comparison with the conventional one. SVR beamforming is superior to the conventional method in both linear and circular arrays, under single source or double non-coherent sources.

Zhi-fei Chen, Jin-cai Sun and Hong Hou
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2010(No. 4): 445-450
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The phase difference method (PDM) is presented for the direction of arrival (DOA) estimation of the narrowband source. It estimates the DOA by measuring the reciprocal of the phase range of the sensor output spectra at the interest frequency bin. The peak width and variance of the PDM are presented. The PDM can distinguish closely spaced sources with different and unknown center frequencies as long as they are separated with at least one frequency bin. The simulation results show that the PDM has a better resolution than that of the conventional beamforming.

Jun-yang Pan, Jin Han and Shi-e Yang
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2010(No. 3): 256-261
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Detection of weak underwater signals is an area of general interest in marine engineering. A weak signal detection scheme was developed; it combined nonlinear dynamical reconstruction techniques, radial basis function (RBF) neural networks and an extended Kalman filter (EKF). In this method chaos theory was used to model background noise. Noise was predicted by phase space reconstruction techniques and RBF neural networks in a synergistic manner. In the absence of a signal, prediction error stayed low and became relatively large when the input contained a signal. EKF was used to improve the convergence rate of the RBF neural network. Application of the scheme to different experimental data sets showed that the algorithm can detect signals hidden in strong noise even when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is less than ?40d B.

Zhi-zhong Liu*, Tian-yun Li, Xiang Zhu and Jun-jie Zhang
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2010(No. 2): 129-136
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The effect of hydrostatic pressure on the vibration dispersion characteristics of fluid-shell coupled structures was studied. Both fluid-loaded cylindrical shells and fluid-filled cylindrical shells were considered. Numerical analysis was applied to solve the dispersion equations for shells filled with or loaded with fluid at various hydrostatic pressures. The results for external pressure showed that non-dimensional axial wave numbers are nearly independent when the pressure is below the critical level. The influence of internal pressure on wave numbers was found significant for the real branch s=1 and the complex branches of dispersion curves. The presence of internal pressure increased the cut on frequencies for the branch s=1 for high order wave modes.

Tian Ma, Jian-guo Huang, Kai-zhuo Lei, Jian-feng Chen and Qun-fei Zhang
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2010(No. 1): 75-80
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Focused underwater plasma sound sources are being applied in more and more fields. Focusing performance is one of the most important factors determining transmission distance and peak values of the pulsed sound waves. The sound source’s components and focusing mechanism were all analyzed. A model was built in 3D Max and wave strength was measured on the simulation platform. Error analysis was fully integrated into the model so that effects on sound focusing performance of processing-errors and installation-errors could be studied. Based on what was practical, ways to limit the errors were proposed. The results of the error analysis should guide the design, machining, placement, debugging and application of underwater plasma sound sources.

Yang Li, Si-chun Li, Sheng-chun Piao and Shi-jun Sun
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2010(No. 1): 99-104
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After an aerial object enters the water, physical changes to sounds in the water caused by the accompanying bubbles are quite complex. As a result, traditional signal analyzing methods cannot identify the real physical object. In view of this situation, a novel method for analyzing the sounds caused by an aerial object’s entry into water was proposed. This method analyzes the vibrational mode of the bubbles by using empitical mode decomposition. Experimental results showed that this method can efficiently remove noise and extract the broadband pulse signal and low-frequency fluctuating signal, producing an accurate resolution of entry time and frequency. This shows the improved performance of the proposed method.

Shi-e Yang
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2010(No. 1): 22-26
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The channel effect of bottom reverberation had been investigated by many authors (Bucker and Morris, 1968; Holland, 2006; Mackenzie, 1962; Zhou and Zhang, 1977), but in most of these researches, bottom reverberation had been described as the sound field formed by distributed secondary sources on boundary, and results obtained in such way sometimes will contradict with principle of reciprocity in bi-static cases (Wang and Shang, 1981). It is desirable to give a method for computation of reverberation, which directly using the scattering effect of stochastic characteristics of water channel, and can give results obeying the principle of reciprocity in any case. In this paper, the method of coupled mode is used for evaluation of bottom reverberation field caused by roughness of bottom interface, and multi-pole method is introduced for consideration of directional source.

CHEN Sheng and LIN Guan-cheng
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2009(No. 4): 328-332
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Cymbal hydrophones have small volume and high sensitivity, but their reception is not stable enough, and their reception is in too narrow a frequency band. In order to overcome these inadequacies, the structure of the cymbal hydrophone was improved. The single ceramic piezoelectric element was replaced with a double one, the radius of the ceramic piezoelectric element was reduced, and a parallel circuit was added. A static analysis of this new structure was developed, and then simulations were made of both the traditional and new hydrophone structure using finite element software. Tests were then conducted in a tank. The results showed that the improved hydrophone has reception in a wider frequency band, reception performance is stable within this frequency band, and sensitivity is still high.

YAN Guang-hong*, CHEN Zhi-fei and SUN Jin-cai
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2009(No. 4): 343-349
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A new method uses a linear array that takes advantage of underwater physical sound fields to estimate the velocity of an underwater moving target. The mathematical model was established by considering the geometric relationship between the moving target installed with only two transducers to radiate sound of different frequencies and the linear array. In addition, deterministic maximum likelihood and signal phase matching algorithms were introduced to effectively find the directions of arrival (DOAs) of the sound sources of the two transducers installed on the target. Factors causing velocity measurement errors were considered. To track the target, a linear array with a compass, a pressure transducer, a signal conditioner and a digital recorder was configured. Relevant requirements for the array parameters were derived. The simulation showed that a 16-element array with an aperture of less than 1m can measure velocity with relative error of no more than 4% when including typical system errors. Anechoic pool and reservoir experiments confirmed these results.

LI Si-chun*, YANG De-sen and JIN Li-ping
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2009(No. 1): 53-57
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An algorithm for estimating the cross-bispectrum of an acoustic vector signal was formulated. Composed features of sound pressure and acoustic vector signals are extracted by the proposed algorithm and other estimating algorithms for secondary and higher order spectra. Its effectiveness was tested with lake and sea trial data. These features can be used to construct an input vector set for a radial basis function neural network. The classification of vessels can then be made based on the extracted features. It was shown that the composed features of acoustic vector signals are more easily divided into categories than those of pressure signals. When using the composed features of acoustic vector signals, the recognition rate of underwater acoustic targets improves.

ZHAO Jun-yi*, MENG Wei-xiao and JIA Shi-lou
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2009(No. 1): 65-70
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A superimposed training (ST) based channel estimation method is presented that provides accurate estimation of a sparse underwater acoustic orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) channel while improving bandwidth transmission efficiency. A periodic low power training sequence is superimposed on the information sequence at the transmitter. The channel parameters can be estimated without consuming any extra system bandwidth, but an unknown information sequence can interfere with the ST channel estimation method, so in this paper, an iterative method was adopted to improve estimation performance. An underwater acoustic channel’s properties include large channel dimensions and a sparse structure, so a matching pursuit (MP) algorithm was used to estimate the nonzero taps, allowing the performance loss caused by additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) to be reduced. The results of computer simulations show that the proposed method has good channel estimation performance and can reduce the peak-to-average ratio of the OFDM channel as well.

XU Xiao-ka SANG En-fang QIAO Gang WANG Ji-sheng
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2008(No. 3): 0
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A multi-beam chirp sonar based on IP connections and DSP processing nodes was proposed and designed to provide an expandable system with high-speed processing and mass-storage of real-time signals for multi-beam profiling sonar. The system was designed for seabed petroleum pipeline detection and orientation, and can receive echo signals and process the data in real time, refreshing the display 10 times per second. Every node of the chirp sonar connects with data processing nodes through TCP/IP.Merely by adding nodes, the system’s processing ability can be increased proportionately without changing the software. System debugging and experimental testing proved the system to be practical and stable. This design provides a new method for high speed active sonar.

MA Ling-kun HUANG Jian-guo ZHANG Li-jie
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2008(No. 3): 0
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In a flank array on an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV), self-generated noise which has broadband and colored spectrum property in frequency and spatial domain is the main factor affecting the performance of weak signal detection, so the technique of adaptive noise cancellation (ANC) as well as physical denoising and active noise cancellation are often used in practice. Because ANC is based on correlations, improvements in performance come from better correlation between reference signals and primary signals. Taking full advantage of the characteristics of flank arrays and the characteristics of information obtained from hydrophones, a new method for reference signal acquisition for adaptive noisecancellation is proposed, in which the multi-channel reference signals are obtained by accurate delaying for a given direction of arrival (DOA) and differencing between adjacent outputs of array elements. The validity of the proposed method was verified through system modeling simulations and lake experiments which showed good performance with little additional computational burden.

SUN Guo-cang HUI Jun-ying CHEN Yang
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2008(No. 3): 0
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An acoustic vector sensor (AVS) can capture more information than a conventional acoustic pressure sensor (APS). As a result, more output channels are required when multiple AVS are formed into arrays, making processing the data stream computationally intense. This paper proposes a new algorithm based on the propagator method for wideband coherent sources that eliminates eigen-decomposition in order to reduce the computational burden. Data from simulations and lake trials showed that the new algorithm is valid: it resolves coherent sources, breaks left/right ambiguity, and allows inter element spacing to exceed a half-wavelength.

LIU Yong-wei LI Qi
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2008(No. 2): 0
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China’s coastal waters are turbid and the properties of the seabed are complex.This negatively impacts the performance of underwater detection equipment.The properties of sound absorption in turbid water are not well understood.In this paper,the coefficient of sound absorption in turbid water was measured by the reverberation technique.All work was done in a reverberation barrel made of seamless aluminum.First,pure water was poured into the reverberation barrel and its reverberation time measured.Next,various concentrations of turbid water were poured into the barrel and their reverberation time measured.After all data had been gathered,the coefficient of sound absorption in turbid water of different concentrations was calculated. From this we determined a law of sound absorption in turbid water as summarized in the paper.

XING Xiao-liang WANG Min-qing
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2008(No. 1): 98
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Longitudinal and horizontal vibration must both be reduced in an effective vibration isolation system. We present a cylindrical shell vibration isolator as a dynamic system composed of four springs and dampers. Vibration is directly produced by the motion of machinery, and more is subsequently generated by harmonic frequencies within their structure. To test the effectiveness of our isolator, we first determined equations for the transmission of vibration from the machine to its cylindrical shell. Damping effects produced by the vibration parameters of our system are then analyzed.

SHI Jie LIU Bo-sheng SONG Hai-yan
Journal of Marine Science and Application,2008(No. 1): 0
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Short baseline system (SBL), which is a kind of underwater acoustic locating technology, has widely applicable value. In order to examine the capability of ship model design, the ship model experimentation should have high accuracy. This paper focuses on the key techniques of high accuracy locating system, including high accuracy sub-array position emendation, divisional locating, anti multi-path interference measure, etc. Experiments show that the SBL locating systems has received the satisfying effect owing to these key techniques proposed in this paper.