Structure Research and Performance Analysis of Vector Hydrophone Microarray

MEMS vector hydrophones have the advantages of high sensitivity and miniaturization. We propose a single-chip integrated high-density vector hydrophone microarray structure. The design of micro vector array can not only improve the receiving sensitivity and SNR of composite hydrophones, but also eliminate the problem of left and right directional ambiguity in traditional positioning. The single-chip integrated microstructure effectively reduces the installation error of traditional spatial arrays and improves the subsequent positioning accuracy. This article takes a <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$3 * 3$</tex> microarray as an example, with a resonant frequency of 244 Hz in wet mode, meeting the testing requirements for very low frequencies. Through ANSYS simulation and theoretical experimental analysis, it was found that compared with the performance of previous single element hydrophone, the structural sensitivity of the 3 * 3 microarray increased by 19dB and the SNR increased by 5.1 dB. Finally, the directional performance of the microarray was validated through ideal standing wave bucket experiments. The research on vector hydrophone microarray plays an important role in the development of underwater acoustic engineering.