Estimating elastic sediment properties with the self-starter

Abstract

The self-starter is implemented by the method of undetermined coefficients for ocean acoustics problems involving elastic sediment layers. This approach is efficient when the ocean bottom can be approximated by a relatively small number of homogeneous layers. For many problems, the self-starter only requires on the order of 10 wave number samples to provide accurate solutions at ranges on the order of 10 wavelengths. The geoacoustic inverse problem can be solved in nearly real time with this approach, which can generate on the order of a thousand forward solutions per second on the current generation of desk-top computers.