Evaluation of Robust Capon Beamforming for Passive Sonar

Abstract

Adaptive beamforming is often used in passive sonar, e.g., to improve the detectability of weak sources. The recently proposed robust Capon beamformer (RCB) exploits array steering vector uncertainty sets, eliminating the need for the ad hoc parameter choices often required when implementing robust adaptive beamforming algorithms. Here, we evaluate the performance of the RCB using experimental and simulated underwater acoustics data.