Localization of Unknown Number of Underwater Acoustic Signal Sources Using Underwater Sensor Network

The estimation of the number and locations of multiple energy sources in underwater (UW) environment is considered in the work using a clustered sensor network (SNet). Sensors are deployed on the seabed to measure the equivalent acoustic energy transmitted by all potential sources, then the received amount of energy is quantized, modulated and sent to cluster heads (CHDs) which are buoys fixed on the water-surface. The CHDs in role forward the received decisions to a data central device (DCD) using decode and forward relaying (DFR) mechanism. At the DCD side, the penalized maximum likelihood estimator (PMLE) is invoked to localize an unknown number of acoustic sources. The performance of the system is assessed by using Monte-Carlo simulations where the obtained results demonstrate the superiority of the introduced PMLE over centroid based localization method benchmark.