Optimal design of a sparse planar array transducer for underwater vehicles by inclusion of crosstalk effect

A planar array acoustic transducer comprises various uniform or random arrangements of radiating elements. These arrays experience severe acoustic interaction owing to the closely packed nature of an elements that deteriorates the radiation performance and this should be taken into consideration for a more realistic array design. A new design method is presented to optimize the structure of an underwater sparse planar array transducer by the inclusion of the crosstalk effect. The directional factor of fully sampled and sparse arrays is first derived and then combined with mutual radiation impedance in order to include the crosstalk effect. The designed sparse array shows a beam pattern very close to that of the fully sampled array, which confirms the effectiveness of the presented design method. The validity of the analytic beam patterns is verified by comparing them with those obtained by the finite element analysis of the optimized sparse array structure.