초록
Low frequency towed line array with high array gain and beam resolution is a long range surveillance sensor for anti-submarine warfare. The beam characteristics is however deteriorated due to the distorted line array sensor caused by low towing speed, wind, current, and towing ship maneuvering. An adaptive beamforming method is utilized in this paper to enhance the distorted line array beam performance by estimating and compensating the nonlinear array shape. A polynomial curve fitting in the least square sense is used to estimate the array shape iteratively with the distributed heading sensors data along the array. Real time array shape estimation and nonlinear array beam calculation is applied to a very long towed line array sensor system and the beam performance is evaluated and compared to the linear beamformer for the simulation and sea trial data.