CRB-optimal sensor placement for multiple passive acoustic arrays

This paper describes a method for selecting the location of multiple passive acoustic arrays to optimize information collection. The passive acoustic arrays are used to localize a contact, and our goal is to choose how to situate and orient the arrays to optimize this localization estimate. To this end, we derive the Cramér-Rao bound on the variance of the estimate of a target's location as a function of where the sensing resources are placed. We then use this bound to select where to place the sensors. We illustrate the method by selecting where to place and orient 5 arrays in a region.