Practical supergain

Abstract

The problem considered is that of designing endfire line array shadings which provide a useful amount of supergain without extreme sensitivity to random errors. Optimum shading weights are obtained subject to a constraint on the gain against uncorrelated white noise. The results of optimum array gain versus white noise gain constraint are presented parametrically for arrays of different interelement spacings, and different noise fields. Results are presented for spherically and cylindrically isotropic noise, and other wavenumber limited noise fields, used in modeling ocean ambient noise. It is found that nearly optimum performance can be obtained in a simple delay and sum beamformer by shading to reduce sidelobes and modest oversteering to reduce mainlohe width without too large a reduction in mainlobe sensitivity.