APPLICATION OF A MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD TYPE ESTIMATOR TO THE TOWED ARRAY SHAPE ESTIMATION PROBLEM

At the TNO Physics and Electronics Laboratory (TNO-FEL), for a number of decades, the behaviour and performance of towed sonar systems has been studied extensively. Since the performance of towed sonars highly depends on the shape of the hydrophone array, the underwater acoustics group started performing research in this field in the 1980's. Currently, the study of array shape and the processing aspects of nonlinear arrays is an important part of the TNO-FEL Low Flequency Active Sonar (LFAS) programme. Part of the work in this field is performed in collaboration with Thomson Sintra Activites Sous-Marines (TS.ASM) in a project referred to as Shape Corrected Beamforming (SCB).