Detection and time-of-arrival estimation of underwater acoustic signals

Roee Diamant, Ryan Kastner, Michele Zorzi

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

We focus on detection and time-of-arrival (ToA) estimation of underwater acoustic signals of unknown structure. The common practice to use a detection threshold may fail when the assumed channel model is mismatched or when noise transients exist. We propose to detect and evaluate the ToA by labeling samples of observed data as 'signal' or 'noise'. Then, signal is detected when enough samples are labeled as 'signal', and ToA is estimated according to the position of the first 'signal'-related sample. We take a clustering approach, thereby obviating the need for a detection threshold and training. Our method combines a constrained expectation-maximization (EM) with the Viterbi algorithm, and becomes handy when channel conditions are rough, noise statistics is hard to estimate, and signal-to-noise ratio is low. Numerical and experimental results show that, at the cost of some additional complexity, our proposed algorithm outperforms common benchmark methods in terms of detection and false alarm rates, and in terms of accuracy of ToA estimation.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSPAWC 2016 - 17th IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
ISBN (Electronic)9781509017492
DOIs
StatePublished - 9 Aug 2016
Event17th IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications, SPAWC 2016 - Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Duration: 3 Jul 20166 Jul 2016

Publication series

NameIEEE Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications, SPAWC
Volume2016-August

Conference

Conference17th IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications, SPAWC 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityEdinburgh
Period3/07/166/07/16

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 IEEE.

Keywords

  • Acoustic detection
  • Clustering
  • Detection in low SNR
  • Expectation-maximization
  • Time-of-Arrival estimation
  • Viterbi algorithm

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Information Systems

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