A Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF)AP-3C Orion plane has?picked up?a?new?signal in the vicinity of the Australian Defence Vessel Ocean Shield while conducting an acoustic search Thursday afternoon, Chief Coordinator of the Joint Agency Coordination Center (JACC) Angus Houston confirmed.

The Australian Defence Vessel Ocean Shield has detected four signals on Saturday and Tuesday, which might come from the missing flight MH370.

"The acoustic data will require further analysis overnight but shows potential of being from a man-made source," Houston said.

According to JACC figures, the detection of Ocean Shield a few days ago is prompting to narrow Thursday's search area from 75,000 square km to 57,923 km, which lies approximately 2,280 km north west of Perth.

Houston has said that once the search area has been narrowed down, searchers could then find something in a "matter of days."

"Hopefully with lots of transmissions we'll have a tight, small area and hopefully in a matter of days we will be able to find something on the bottom that might confirm that this is the last resting place of MH370," he said.