Thin Cable Fiber-Optic Hydrophone Array for Passive Acoustic Surveillance Applications

Fiber-optic interferometric sensing is a very attractive approach for creating lightweight, high-sensitive, and fully passive fiber-optic hydrophone arrays. In this paper, results of sea trials of the thin cable fiber-optic hydrophone array for passive acoustic surveillance applications are presented. The performed trials consisted of two parts: the first part was devoted to the estimation of the array acoustic performance and the second part included the direction of arrival (DOA) estimation of the moving acoustic source. The estimation of the array acoustic performance showed that the average measured pressure sensitivity of fiber-optic hydrophones increased as the acoustic frequency increased from -122 dB re rad/μPa at 20 Hz to -116 dB re rad/μPa at 495 Hz. The average minimum detectable pressure of hydrophones decreased from 78, 1 dB re μPa at 20 Hz to 28, 5 dB re 1 μPa at 495 Hz. Obtained values of the minimum detectable pressure were below the sea state zero noise level in the considered frequency range. The average dynamic range of fiber-optic hydrophones was above 120 dB at 495 Hz. The proper capability of the DOA estimation was successfully demonstrated using the motor boat as the moving acoustic source. Trajectories of the moving boat were obtained by using the beamscan DOA estimation algorithm with additional Kalman filtering. Obtained results demonstrated the great potential of using fiber-optic interferometric sensors for hydroacoustic surveillance applications. The presented results might be helpful for the implementation of extended fiber-optic hydroacoustic surveillance systems.