Adaptive intrawell matched stochastic resonance with a potential constraint aided line enhancer for passive sonars

Remote passive sonar detection and classification are challenging problems that require the user to extract signatures under low signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio conditions. Adaptive line enhancers (ALEs) have been widely utilized in passive sonars for enhancing narrowband discrete components, but the performance is limited. In this paper, we propose an adaptive intrawell matched stochastic resonance (AIMSR) method, aiming to break through the limitation of the conventional ALE by nonlinear filtering effects. To make it practically applicable, we addressed two problems: (1) the parameterized implementation of stochastic resonance (SR) under the low sampling rate condition and (2) the feasibility of realization in an embedded system with low computational complexity. For the first problem, the framework of intrawell matched stochastic resonance with potential constraint is implemented with three distinct merits: (a) it can ease the insufficient time-scale matching constraint so as to weaken the uncertain affect on potential parameter tuning; (b) the inaccurate noise intensity estimation can be eased; (c) it can release the limitation on system response which allows a higher input frequency in breaking through the large sampling rate limitation. For the second problem, we assumed a particular case to ease the potential parameter a_opt = 1. As a result, the computation complexity is greatly reduced, and the extremely large parameter limitation is relaxed simultaneously. Simulation analyses are conducted with a discrete line signature and harmonic related line signature that reflect the superior filtering performance with limited sampling rate conditions; without loss of generality of detection, we considered two circumstances corresponding to H₁ (periodic signal with noise) and H₀ (pure noise) hypotheses, respectively, which indicates the detection performance fairly well. Application verification was experimentally conducted in a reservoir with an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to validate the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed method. The results indicate that the proposed method surpasses the conventional ALE method in lower frequency contexts, where there is about 10 dB improvement for the fundamental frequency in the sense of power spectrum density (PSD).