Simulation Study of the Acoustic Sensor Array Affecting the Localization Performance of the Thunder Source

This paper studied the performance of positioning thunder source for six types of acoustic sensor arrays by using an adaptive beamforming far-field positioning methodology by simulating. Then, the beam pattern of various arrays and the feature of their parameters changing are studied from array shapes, number of array elements, array aperture, array area, and direction of arrival. Research has shown that when the array elements are evenly and symmetrically distributed, the positioning effects of arrays of different shapes are significantly different. The positioning accuracy of the same array shape increases as the number of elements increases, but blindly increasing the number of elements will reduce the overall cost performance of the array. With the same number of array elements, the increase in array aperture and array area can effectively improve the positioning accuracy. The results will provide guidance and reference for the observational design and research of lightning acoustics.