Acoustic source localization in ports with different beamforming algorithms

Acoustic cameras have been used to investigate the origin of a noise and localize it on video for a couple of decades. This was made possible by applying beamforming techniques to the acoustic signals simultaneously acquired by a microphone array. The number of scientists working on improving the efficiency and accuracy of this technique increased over the years, leading to the design and production of different shapes for the antenna and microphone array. Moreover, in the last years many different algorithms for beamforming techniques have been published to improve the original “Delay and Sum” method. This field is evolving rapidly and, unfortunately, there is no clear view on the advantages of one method over another, both from a theoretical and a practical point of view. This work shows the different results obtained by different algorithms when applied to the same input acoustic signals, i.e., they can localize the noise source in different points of the screen. The input signals were acquired with acoustic camera measurements to investigate port noise, a topic that has been neglected for too long and on which only few studies have been carried out. The various sound sources acting on ships' pass-by and the predominant emitters in a multisource environment have therefore been localized using the different algorithms.