Array Shading to Maximize Deflection Coefficient for Broadband Signal Detection with Conventional Beamforming

This paper develops and applies a numerical optimization procedure to compute broadband noise-adaptive weights for delay and sum beamforming that are conditioned to maximize the deflection coefficient at the output of a square law detector for a given set of underwater pressure measurements. The resulting optimal weights mitigate the effects of noise and interferers and maximize signal detection. Comparison of the optimal weights with minimum variance distortionless response weights show that the presented algorithm provides higher attenuation of interferers. We also use the noise-adaptive algorithm to find the optimal sparse array geometry for a given number of sensors and aperture. Comparison of the resulting optimal array with coprime, nested, and semi-coprime arrays shows that the proposed sparse array suppresses interferers more than the other sparse arrays.