Constant-beamwidth and constant-powerwidth wideband robust Capon beamformers for acoustic imaging

Abstract

The standard Capon beamformer (SCB) is sensitive to the mismatch between the assumed and actual array steering vector, which occurs often in practice. Recently a robust Capon beamformer (RCB) was proposed by extending the SCB to the case of uncertain array steering vectors. In certain applications such as acoustic imaging, it is desirable that the beamwidth is constant across the frequency bins. This prevents future corrections for different frequencies and contributes to consistent sound pressure level (SPL) estimation, which means that for an acoustic wideband monopole source with a flat spectrum the acoustic image for each frequency bin stays the same. However, the beamwidth of RCB decreases with frequency, which can lead to inconsistent imaging results across the frequencies. In this paper two beamformers are proposed, namely a constant-beamwidth robust Capon beamformer (CBRCB) and a constant-powerwidth robust Capon beamformer (CPRCB), as extensions of RCB for consistent wideband acoustic imaging. Both CBRCB and CPRCB are more robust against array steering vector errors and finite sample size problems than SCB and have better resolution and interference suppression capability than data-independent beamformers. Moreover, they both can be efficiently implemented. The effectiveness of CBRCB and CPRCB is demonstrated via a number of simulated and experimental examples.