Parameter estimation of underwater moving sources by using matched Wigner transform

According to the acoustical Doppler effect, an improved narrow-band technique is proposed to estimate underwater source's motion parameters including speed, closest distance, rest frequency, and closest point of approach (CPA) time, by using a single receiving sensor. First, the matched Wigner transform (MWT), which produces a time-frequency distribution (TFD) with optimal energy concentration and without inner artifacts for a high-order polynomial phase signal, is defined. On the basis of the MWT, a method is developed for the accurate instantaneous frequency (IF) estimation of Doppler signal. Moreover, we deduce that the Wigner-Ville distribution of the Doppler signal has a peak at the center of the TFD. Thereafter, the CPA time is directly estimated. When the CPA time is obtained, the other motion parameters can be easily estimated by using a simplified amplitude weighted nonlinear least-squares method, which fits the IF estimates to the predicted Doppler shift. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed scheme is validated by using underwater acoustic data.