Harmonic Source Depth Estimation by a Single Hydrophone under Unknown Seabed Geoacoustic Property

The passive estimation of harmonic sound source depth is of great significance for underwater target localization and identification. Passive source depth estimation using a single hydrophone with an unknown seabed geoacoustic property is a crucial challenge. To address this issue, a harmonic sound source depth estimation algorithm, seabed independent depth estimation (SIDE) algorithm, is proposed. This algorithm combines the estimated mode depth functions, modal amplitudes, and the sign of each modal to estimate the sound source depth. The performance of the SIDE algorithm is analyzed by simulations. Results show that the SIDE is insensitive to the initial range of the sound source, the source depth, the hydrophone depth, the source velocity, and the type of the seabed. Finally, the effectiveness of the SIDE algorithm is verified by the SWellEX-96 data.