Particle velocity gradient based acoustic mode beamforming for short linear vector sensor arrays

In this paper, a subtractive beamforming algorithm for short linear arrays of two-dimensional particle velocity sensors is described. The proposed method extracts the highly directional acoustic modes from the spatial gradients of the particle velocity field measured at closely spaced sensors along the array. The number of sensors in the array limits the highest order of modes that can be extracted. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations indicate that the acoustic mode beamformer achieves directivity comparable to the maximum directivity that can be obtained with differential microphone arrays of equivalent aperture. When compared to conventional delay-and-sum beamformers for pressure sensor arrays, the proposed method achieves comparable directivity with 70%-85% shorter apertures. Moreover, the proposed method has additional capabilities such as high front-back (port-starboard) discrimination, frequency and steer direction independent response, and robustness to correlated ambient noise. Small inter-sensor spacing that results in very compact apertures makes the proposed beamformer suitable for space constrained applications such as hearing aids and short towed arrays for autonomous underwater platforms.