Vector sensor geoacoustic estimation with standard arrays

Vector Sensor Arrays (hereafter VSAs) are progressively becoming more and more attractive among the underwater acoustics community due to the advantages of VSAs over standard arrays of acoustic hydrophones. While the later record only acoustic pressure, VSAs record also particle velocity; such technical feature increases by a factor of four the amount of information that can be used for the processing ofacoustic data, leading to a substantial increase in performance. Since VSA sensor technology is relatively recent, and thus not yet fully available, one can consider the usage of closely located pairs of standard hydrophones, which can be used to estimate the vertical component of particle velocity as a difference of acoustic pressure, measured at each pair of hydrophones. The present discussion introduces a theoretical review of particle velocity calculations using different acoustic models, and tests the performance of estimators for geoacoustic inversion using acoustic pressure, particle velocity components and direct and approximated values of the vertical component only.