Array shape calibration with phase unwrapping techniques for highly deformed arrays

Flexible sensor arrays, such as towed and bottom‐mounted arrays, typically suffer from large shape deformations, which seriously affect the results of array processing. In this article, an innovative array shape calibration method with phase unwrapping techniques for highly deformed arrays is proposed. The deformed array is divided into several subarrays, and the first subarray is assumed to suffer from slight shape deformations which can be pre‐calibrated. With the consideration of highly deformed arrays, uncalibrated sensors in other subarrays would have serious position mismatches. The phase differences between uncalibrated and pre‐calibrated sensors are probably larger than 2 π , which lead to phase ambiguity problems. A phase unwrapping technique is proposed to efficiently solve the phase ambiguity problem by considering the physical structure constraints of the deformed array, such as intersensor distance and bending angle. Then, sensor positions in highly deformed arrays are calibrated with multiple target directions. Simulation results evaluate the performance of the proposed calibration method, and the SwellEx‐96 shallow water experiment data set is utilised to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.