Cumulants based processing of Acoustic Vector Sensor data

Acoustic Vector Sensors measure acoustic pressure as well as the acoustic particle velocity to estimate the acoustic intensity. The acoustic intensity, which is a vector quantity, represents the magnitude and direction of the active or propagating part of an acoustic field thus indicating the DOA (Direction of arrival) of a received signal. Cumulant based beamforming and DOA estimation methods suitable for identification and extraction of desired non-gaussian signal in the presence of gaussian interferences and/or noise have been investigated and compared against covariance based alogorithm, the performance being measured in terms of Mean Square Angular Error (MSAE) and resolution.