Simulation Study of the Support Shell Inside Spherical Receiving Array for Small-Sized Platforms

A spherical receiving array refers to a sensor array composed of a certain number of hydrophones arranged closely according to the spherical geometric structure, which has full space coverage detection capability and high-precision azimuth resolution characteristics. It plays a key role in tasks such as underwater acoustic detection, navigation, communication, and target recognition. This article uses finite element software to conduct simulation research on spherical receiving arrays on small-sized platforms. Based on the influence of factors such as shell material, shell thickness, and distance from the shell on the sensitivity of hydrophone elements, a lightweight shell design with hole array topology is proposed to significantly improve the flatness of hydrophone sensitivity and performance consistency between array elements in a wide frequency band, providing reference for the design of spherical receiving arrays in finite space.