DIFAR type underwater passive systems are one of the more commonly used tools for detecting submarines. At the design stage, which usually uses computer simulations, it is necessary to generate acoustic noise of the sea. It has been shown that correlating noise significantly reduces these errors compared to the assumption that noise is uncorrelated. In addition, bearing errors have been shown to be the same in systems with a commonly used antenna containing five hydrophones, as in a system without a central hydrophone, which may be useful in some DIFAR system design solutions.

This paper focuses on the radio direction finding (DF) in multipath environments. Based on the measurement results presented in the open literature, the authors analyse the influence of environment transmission properties on the spread of the signal reception angle. Parameters that define these properties are rms delay and angle spreads. For these parameters, the mutual relationship is determined. This relationship is the basis for assessment of the required number of bearings that minimize the influence of the environment on the accuracy of DF procedure. In the presented analysis, the statistical properties of the signal reception angle are approximated by the normal distribution. The number of bearings versus the rms delay spread is presented as the main objective of this paper. In addition, a methodology of the bearings’ spatial averaging that provides better estimation of the reception angle is shown.