A virtual receiving array using a time‐reversal chaotic cavity.

It has been demonstrated that a virtual transmitting array can be constructed using a small number of transducers glued to a chaotic cavity (or a random reverberator) in conjunction with time reversal acoustics [Montaldo et al., IEEE Trans. Ultrason., Ferroelec., Freq. Contr. 52, 1489–1497 (2005)]. However, a virtual receiving array based on the concept has been neither realized nor reported yet. This paper presents an underwater virtual receiving array using a time‐reversal chaotic cavity. The prototype array consists of a single immersion transducer and a chaotic cavity and is made to have a total of 8×8 virtual receiving elements. The performance of the virtual array is compared with a commercial 2‐D hydrophone array. [Work supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (MEST) (NRF‐2009‐ 0077588).]