An information theoretic performance bound for passive sonar localization of a moving source

Several passive sonar signal processing methods have previously been developed for determining the location of a source radiating tonal acoustic energy while moving through a shallow water environment. These localization algorithms rely on the complex interference pattern resulting from multipath acoustic propagation. By treating passive sonar localization as a communications problem, an information theoretic upper bound on performance can be derived. The bound is based on acoustic propagation, and depends on radial distance the source travels through the waveguide, signal to noise ratio, frequency of the radiated acoustic tone, and minimum sound speed of the problem, and resolution of the localization. An example using parameters from the SWellEx-96 experiment is shown.