Hybrid Detector for Ship Radiated Signal in Statistically Varying Underwater Noise

The problem of passive detection of ship radiated signals has been investigated for many years. A primary lacuna in most detectors is that they are optimal for a specific signal and noise environment, which deviates significantly from the practical signal and noise encountered in the ocean medium. Furthermore, underwater signal and noise statistics varies significantly over time and space, thereby deteriorating the performance of the detectors that are tuned to be optimal for a particular signal and noise assumption. Therefore, a single detector does not seem sufficient in detecting the signal in this statistically varying environment. Here, we consider several detectors that are individually optimal in a given scenario, and then combine these individual optimal detectors to formulate a hybrid detector that performs reasonably well for a large range of noise statistics. Simulation results show that the hybrid detector performs better than its constituent detectors.