Performance of a Cylindrical Hydrophone Array for
Practical Use
Shaohao Zhu, Yixin Yang*, Yong Wang, Qiulong Yang, Xidang Yan
School of Marine Science and Technology
Northwestern Polytechnical University
Xi’an, China
zsh29511@mail.nwpu.edu.cn, yxyang@nwpu.edu.cn (Corresponding author)
Abstract—Cylindrical arrays are widely used in sonar systems
for underwater target detection. For the sake of reducing
calculation, each line of hydrophones at the same azimuth
direction aligned with the cylinder axis are hardwired together in
practice and thus, each line array with omnidirectional sensors
becomes a directional sensor steered to broadside. As a result, the
cylindrical array can be treated as a circular array with
directional elements. In this paper, a model is introduced for
computing the array gain and the white noise gain of an
acoustically transparent cylindrical array. The three-dimensional
acoustic field is described by the angular spectral density
function and the steering vectors are represented by the
cylindrical harmonic expansions, based on the derived noise
cross-spectral matrix. Simulation results of array gains and white
noise gains with the conventional beamformer (CBF) and the
minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) beamformer
for different situations are presented, which has a guiding
significance for practical applications.
Index Terms—Cylindrical array, array gain, white noise gain,
noise covariance matrix.
I. INTRODUCTION
Array signal processing techniques has been widely used in
sonar, radar and wireless telecommunication for decades of
years[1-8]. The cylindrical arrays used in sonar for underwater
target detection are made up of several circular arrays and have
advantages over line arrays with left-right ambiguity and
circular arrays with up-down ambiguity. The hydrophones at
the same azimuth direction lying in different circular arrays are
vertically aligned and can be viewed as a line array, which is
parallel to the cylinder axis. For the sake of reducing the
computational load in practice, the hydrophones in each line
are often hardwired together and thus the cylindrical array is
converted to a circular array with directional elements. The
incident angles of the acoustic signals radiated by distant
underwater vessels are close to zero elevation[1][9], while
various kinds of ambient noises may impinge from any
directions. Thus without suppressing the signal, the hardwired
line array can reduce the ambient noise.
A model for this type of acoustically transparent cylindrical
array is introduced to compute the performances, including the
array gain and the white noise gain, which indicate the noise
reduction ability and robustness of the array, respectively.
978-1-5386-3142-3/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
Source
z

r
º y
x M-1 z1
 
zl
zL
Fig. 1. Schematic illustration of the coordinate system of a cylindrical array.
Based on Meyer’s work[5], Bertilone[1] introduced a model for
the array gain with a cylindrical array mounted on metal baffles.
Inspired by this, this paper studies the array gain and the white
noise gain with an acoustically transparent cylindrical array.
Two beamformers, the conventional beamformer (CBF) and
the minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR)
beamformer, are used in this model to show the performance of
the array. In order to compute the gains, the manifold vector
and noise cross-spectral matrix are required and cylindrical
harmonic expansions are adopted, which makes it easy to
compute the numerical integration for the elements in the
matrix. Simulation results are given as a function of the
number of circular array comprising the cylindrical array or as
a function of the interval between two adjacent sensors in the
line array parallel to the cylinder axis.
This paper is organized as follows. First, the signal model
are given and the method for computing the noise cross-
spectral matrix is introduced. Then the definitions of the two
beamformers are shown. The simulation results of the array
gain and white noise gain are presented in Part III. Finally, the
conclusion is given.
II. SIGNAL MODEL AND THEORETICAL FORMULATIONS
A. Signal Model
The geometry of the cylindrical array, which is composed
of L circular arrays with radius r, is shown is Fig. 1, and the
height of the l-th circular array is zl reference to the coordinate where the [·]T denotes transposition.
system. Each circular array has M sensors equally distributed
B. Noise Cross-spectral Matrices
on the circumference, in other words, the cylindrical array is
made up of M linear arrays aligned with the cylinder axis. The With a great quantity of sound sources evenly distributed
array is assumed to be acoustically transparent without on a quite large sphere reference to the array, the isotropic
scattering. The elevation angle and the azimuth angle of the noise field is modeled as a superposition of independent plane
incident signal are θ and φ , respectively. Let m = 0,…,M 1 waves from the sources with uniform spectral density. The
normalized noise cross-spectral matrix can be expressed as [1]
label the sensors that lie on each circular array, and let l = 1,…,
L label the sensors on each line array. Suppose an narrowband
1 2π π
acoustic plane wave with magnitude A impinges from noise = ³ ³ N (θ , φ ) ⋅ P (θ , φ )
direction (θ , φ ) , and the narrowband output of the ( m, l ) th 4π ⋅ L2 0 0 (7)
sensor at frequency f is expressed as [1-4][7] ⋅P H (θ , φ ) sin θ dθ dφ ,

with elements
pm,l (θ , φ ) = A ( f ) e − jk [ zl cosθ + r sin θ cos(φ −φm )]
= A ( f ) e − jkr sin θ cos(φ −φm ) ⋅ e − jkzl cosθ 1 2π π
∞ ρ m,m ' = ³ ³ N (θ , φ ) ⋅ pm (θ , φ )
4π ⋅ L2
= A( f ) ¦ (− j) J n ( kr sin θ ) e
n jn (φ −φm ) − jkzl cosθ 0 0
⋅e (1)
n =−∞ ⋅ pm∗ ' (θ , φ ) sin θ dθ d φ
∞ (8)
= A( f ) ¦be jn ( φ −φm ) 1 2π π
⋅ e − jkzl cosθ , N (θ , φ ) ⋅ h (θ ) ⋅ψ m (θ , φ )
2

n =−∞
n =
4π ⋅ L2 ³ ³
0 0

⋅ψ m∗ ' (θ , φ ) sin θ dθ d φ ,
bn = ( − j ) J n ( kr sin θ ) ,
n
(2) where [·]H indicates the Hermitian transpose and the [·]*
denotes complex conjugation. N ( f ,θ , φ ) is the angular
where j = −1 is the imaginary unit, Jn is nth-order cylindrical spectral density function of the noise field, and N ( f ,θ , φ ) =1
Bessel function, and k = 2π f c is the wave number (c is the indicates that the noise filed is spherically isotropic.
sound speed in water). The magnitude of the plane wave is Substitution of equation (3) into equation (8) yields the
always supposed to be one unit, that is A ( f ) = 1 . The output of elements of n for the line array on an infinite rigid cylinder,
the m-th line array is obtained by summing the outputs of the L
sensors and it is given by ∞
1 π
¦ 2⋅ L e − jn (φm −φm ' ) ³ h (θ ) bn sin θ dθ
2
ρ m,m ' =
2
2 0
n =−∞
L , (9)
pm (θ , φ ) = ¦ e − jk [ zl cosθ + r sinθ cos(φ −φm )] ∞
εn π
=¦ cos ( n (φm − φm ' ) ) ³ h (θ ) bn sin θ dθ
2 2
l =1
n =0 2 ⋅ L
2 0
L ∞
= ¦ e − jkzl cosθ ⋅ ¦be n
jn ( φ −φm )
(3)
l =1 n =−∞ where ε 0 = 1 , ε n = 2 (n > 0) .
= h (θ )ψ m (θ , φ ) ,
C. Beamformers and Beampatterns
The beampattern is always viewed as a valuable reference
L of the performance of the array. Let w be the weighting vector,
h (θ ) = ¦ e − jkzl cosθ , (4) and then the beampattern is derived as[8]
l =1

B (θ , φ ) = w H (θ 0 , φ0 ) P (θ , φ ) , (10)
∞
ψ m (θ , φ ) = ¦be
n =−∞
n
jn (φ −φm )
. (5) where (θ 0 , φ0 ) is the preset steering direction.
Given that the effects of the baffles and without loss of
Then the outputs of the M line arrays can be viewed as the generality, the generalized weighting vector of CBF is defined
manifold vector of a circular array, as

P (θ 0 , φ0 )
P (θ , φ ) = ª¬ p0 (θ , φ ) ,..., pm (θ , φ ) ,..., pM −1 (θ , φ )º¼ .
T
(6) w CBF = . (11)
P H
(θ0 , φ0 ) P (θ0 , φ0 )
 The MVDR beamformer is to minimizing the variance of
the array output or the variance of the residual noise with the
constraint[6]
min w H  n w ˈw (θ 0 , φ0 ) P (θ 0 , φ0 ) = 1 ,
H
We use Lagrange approach to solve the optimization problem
and then the optimal weighting vector of MVDR will be
 n−1P (θ 0 , φ0 )
w MVDR =
P H (θ 0 , φ0 )  n−1P (θ 0 , φ0 )
D. Array Gain and White Noise Gain
Array gain and white noise gain measure the ability of
noise rejection and robustness of the beamformer, respectively.
The array gain is defined as
every two eigenvalues are equal to each other except the largest
and smallest values. So the number of eigenvalues presented in
Fig. 2 are ( M 2 + 1) . Apparently, the eigenvalues are very
small at low frequencies, which indicates that the matrix is ill-
(12) conditioned even that it becomes a singular matrix. So in this
case, the MVDR beamformer will suffer from numerical
problems, leading to badly unrobustness because of the large
sensor noise amplification, which is shown up in Fig. 3. We
can see that the array gain and the white noise gain of the CBF
beamformer are in line with expectations. When kr is smaller
than 0.8, the white noise gain of the MVDR beamformer is
. (13)
very small and as a result, the array gain of the MVDR
beamformer drops significantly. With the increasing of kr, the
performance of the MVDR beamformer is becoming more and
more close to that of the CBF beamformer.

2
w (θ 0 , φ0 ) P (θ 0 , φ0 )
H

AG = . (14)
w (θ 0 , φ0 ) n w (θ 0 , φ0 )
H

The white noise gain is given by

2
w (θ 0 , φ0 ) P (θ 0 , φ0 )
H

WNG =
w (θ 0 , φ0 ) I n w (θ 0 , φ0 )
H
Fig. 2. Eigenvalues of the noise cross-spectral matrix as a function of kr.
(15)
1
= .
w (θ 0 , φ0 ) w (θ 0 , φ0 )
H

III. SIMULATION RESULTS

Because the hydrophones in each line are hardwired
together, the incident angle of the signal is assumed to be
horizontal, which means the elevation angle is θ 0 = 0° . Then
the cylindrical array can be viewed as that of a circular array,
h (θ 0 ) will be a constant, and thus P (θ , φ ) is represented by

 (θ 0 , φ ) = ª¬ψ 0 (θ 0 , φ ) ,...,ψ m (θ 0 , φ ) ,...,ψ M −1 (θ 0 , φ )º¼ , (16)

T

which is a function of azimuth angle φ , and independent of θ .

A. Performance with the Value kr

Consider a cylindrical array with L = 3 circular arrays, and
each circular array with radius r = 0.3 m has M = 12
hydrophones. The interval between two adjacent sensors in
each line is Δz = 0.2 m. The sound speed in water is 1500 m/s.
The value kr (the product of k and r) contains the information
of signal frequency and the array aperture, and thus the
performance of the array can be expressed as a function of kr.
Figure 2 plots the eigenvalues of noise cross-spectral
matrix n as a function of kr. Because n is a circulant matrix, Fig. 3. Performance of the CBF and MVDR beamformers as a function of kr,
(a) array gain, and (b) white noise gain.
 When Δz = 0.8 , the array gain for the CBF beamformer is
twice of that Δz = 0.1 . Also for the MVDR beamformer, the
array gain improves about 3.5 dB with the increasing of Δz .
For a line array, the interval between two adjacent sensors is
always chosen as half of the wavelength, because under this
circumstance, the noises received by different hydrophones are
independent of each other.
C. Performance with the Value L
The more sensors the array has, the larger the array gain
will be. As we all know, the number of sensors affects the array
performance greatly. In this part, the simulation results
concerning with L are presented, and other array configurations
Fig. 4. Eigenvalues of the noise cross-spectral matrix as a function of Δz .
are the same with Part A.
Figure 6 plots the white noise gain of the CBF and MVDR
beamformers as a function of kr with different L. We can see
that the white noise gains with different L doesn’t change much,
and especially for the CBF beamformer, the curves overlap
together into one. While the curves of the MVDR beamformer
fluctuate slightly when the value kr is larger than 4.
Figure 7 plots the array gain of the CBF and MVDR
beamformers as a function of kr with different L. Apparently,
the larger the L is, the higher the array gain will be. But with
the increasing of L, the increase of the array gain is becoming
smaller and smaller. This phenomenon is easy to explain:
double sensors can provide twice the array gain. If L is 3 at
present, then the array gain will be doubled when L is 6. It
reminds us that too many sensors are not necessary, because
the cost will be unaffordable.

Fig. 5. Performance of the CBF and MVDR beamformers as a function

of Δz , (a) array gain, and (b) white noise gain.

B. Performance with the Value Δz

As is known to us all, the interval Δz between two adjacent
sensors of a line array has effects on the performance. In this
part, the array configuration is the same with Part A. Since we
study the effects of Δz on the performance, the kr will be a
fixed value, and taking Fig. 2 as a reference, kr = 2 is chosen.
Figure 4 plots the eigenvalues of noise cross-spectral
matrix n as a function of Δz . The eigenvalues change slowly
with the increasing of Δz . Figure 5 plots the performance of
the CBF and MVDR beamformers as a function of Δz . The
white noise gain changes little, while Δz does have impacts on Fig. 6. White noise gain of the CBF and MVDR beamformers as a function
the array gain, which changes violently when Δz is small. of kr with different L, (a) CBF, and (b) MVDR.

Fig. 7. Array gain of the CBF and MVDR beamformers as a function of kr
with different L, (a) CBF, and (b) MVDR.
IV. CONCLUSION
This paper presents a model of computing the array gain
and the white noise gain for an acoustically transparent
cylindrical array for practical use. The three-dimensional
acoustic field is described by the angular spectral density
function and the steering vectors are represented by the
cylindrical harmonic expansions, based on the derived noise
covariance matrix. Simulation results of array gains and white
noise gains with the conventional beamformer and the
minimum variance distortionless response beamformer for
different situations are presented, which has a guiding
significance for practical applications.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11604259 and 11527809) and
the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No.
2016M592782).
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