METHOD OF MEASURING LEVELS AND HORIZONTAL DIRECTIVITY OF NOISE OF OFF-SHORE OIL AND GAS FACILITIES Russian patent published in 2013 - IPC G01S3/80 

FIELD: physics.

SUBSTANCE: method involves, in each cycle of processing hydroacoustic information, receiving a hydroacoustic signal on multiple receiving linear antennae with a developed aperture in the horizontal plane, performing fast Fourier transform over time samples of signals from separate antenna hydrophones and range filtering, as well as static beam pattern fan in the horizontal plane for each of the antennae, frequency-time processing in each spatial channel, squaring, time-averaging, standardising signals and noise, making a decision on detection by comparing with a threshold signal-to-noise ratio. The following operations are successively performed in each cycle of processing hydroacoustic information in addition to the above-mentioned: detecting narrow-band components in spectra of each spatial channel; eliminating the effect of narrow-band components of the spectrum of strong noise sources on the spectra in the spatial channels of the beam pattern fan; identifying local maxima of a priori known fixed noise objects based on known coordinates thereof; estimating the noise spectrum, including the solid part and narrow-band components; comparing the obtained estimates of the levels of readings of the spectrum of noise objects scaled to 1 m, with values of allowable noise levels and generating a feature of exceeding the allowable level with refinement of the frequency and the level of spectrum fragments, where the exceeding of the allowable noise level occurs; selecting spatial channels of the static beam pattern fan of each of the receiving antennae.

EFFECT: high accuracy when measuring levels and horizontal directivity of noise of off-shore oil and gas facilities, under the condition that the number and coordinates of its units are known.

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