Analysis of a ray-based blind deconvolution algorithm on ships of opportunity in the Santa Barbara Channel

Abstract

The ray-based blind deconvolution (RBD) technique for ocean waveguides estimates both the Channel Impulse Response (CIR) and the unknown waveform radiated by some source of opportunity measured on an array of hydrophones using only knowledge of the array geometry and the local sound speed. This method has been shown to be well suited for estimating CIRs in environments with water column depths of ~100 m and the estimated CIRs have been successfully used in conjunction with other techniques, such as matched field processing or waveguide invariant based approaches, for source localization, bottom parameter inversion, and other related studies. With the recent 2016 at-sea passive noise experiment in the Santa Barbara Channel (SBC), plenty of processing remains to be done; however, the RBD’s performance and robustness in such an environment (~580 m depth, downward refracting profile) is not well documented. Here, we seek to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of the RBD method in estimating CIRs from ships of opportunity in the SBC in terms of the assumptions of the technique, application to data, and numerical simulation.