Geoacoustic inversion in shallow water using broadband synthetic aperture and single hydrophone acoustic data

Abstract

A majority of geoacoustic inversion experiments sample the acoustic field on long arrays. This paper uses a moving single hydrophone to create a large synthetic aperture array for geoacoustic inversion. Practically, this is operationally attractive compared to using long arrays. For example, one possible application is the use of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to perform acoustic field sampling and pre-processing for geoacoustic inversion. The approach comprises synthetic aperture formation and a directed Monte Carlo Bayesian broadband frequency coherent geoacoustic inversion. This is demonstrated with simulated and real data from the MAPEX2000 experiment conducted by the NATO Undersea Research Center, using only one hydrophone of a towed array and a moored source in the Mediterranean Sea. The method yielded similar results compared to an equivalent physical array.