Performance bounds for passive sensor arrays operating in a turbulent medium: plane-wave analysis

The performance bounds of a passive acoustic array operating in a turbulent medium with fluctuations described by a von Kármán spectrum are investigated. This treatment considers a single, monochromatic, plane-wave source at near-normal incidence. A line-of-sight propagation path is assumed. The primary interests are in calculating the Cramer-Rao lower bounds of the azimuthal and elevational angles of arrival and in observing how these bounds change with the introduction of additional unknowns, such as the propagation distance, turbulence parameters, and signal-to-noise ratio. In both two and three dimensions, it is found that for large values of the index-of-refraction variance, the Cramer-Rao lower bounds of the angles of arrival increase significantly at large values of the normalized propagation distance. For small values of the index-of-refraction variance and normalized propagation distance, the signal-to-noise ratio is found to be the limiting factor. In the two-dimensional treatment, it is found that the estimate of the angle of arrival will decouple from the estimates of the other parameters with the appropriate choice of array geometry. In three dimensions, again with an appropriate choice of array geometry, the estimates of the azimuth and elevation will decouple from the estimates of the other parameters, but due to the constraints of the model, will remain coupled to one another.