Seabed Parameters Research Articles

Incoherent Shallow-Water Seabed Logging Using Numerical-Model-Based Optimization for the Prediction of Unperturbed UEP Signatures

Underwater electric potential (UEP) ship signatures are evaluated at a test site that provides only incoherent data from electric field sensors placed on the seabed. This paper shows how these data sets can be used to extract significant seabed parameters, which are evaluated by a numerical model combined with an optimization process in the frequency range from 1 Hz up to 100 kHz. This is in contrast to the controlled electromagnetic source technology used by geophysicists, which has to track both phase and amplitude, and, therefore, cannot simply be applied to data from per se stationary systems. Using the aforementioned frequency range within COMSOL Multiphysics (v6.0), the finite-element-based simulation software, a sensitivity analysis of seabed parameter behavior within a seabed depth range from 1 m to 20 m is evaluated for the highest sensitivity for each of the measurable field amplitudes of the locally available sensors. From this, the electrical conductivities of two seabed layers and the depth of the first layer can be extracted using a combination of a genetic algorithm and the Nelder–Mead method. In summary, phase information is not required to characterize the stratified seabed, providing a cost-effective approach to obtaining effective environmental conditions for free-water signature calculations.

Retrieval of Sea-Bed Parameters by the Method of Matching Acoustic Fields on the Basis of Vertical Angular Spectra

We use the field matching method to solve the inverse problem of estimating the geoacoustic parameters of a stratified sea bed using the objective function based on the norm of difference between the experimental and simulated vertical angular spectra of the acoustic field and combination of the rapid-annealing method with direct search methods for localization of the global minimum of the objective function. To reduce the influence of the ravine effects of the objective function, we use regularization on the basis of mutual correlations of the experimental and simulated vertical angular spectra of the acoustic field. The numerical experiment has been performed to retrieve the parameters of the model waveguide, e.g., the thickness of the water layer and the layer of sediments, the velocity and attenuation coefficients of longitudinal waves, and the density of the sediment layer and the subjacent half-space in the presence of noise interference of different intensity levels.

Study on single-parameter inversion for shallow oceans

A new rapid geoacoustic inversion technique has been developed, by reducing the number of inversion parameters to one instead of multi-parameters inversion. After fitting basic seabed parameters, a new quantity defined as the bottom loss gradient was proposed and single-parameter inversion method was designed accordingly. Seabed properties were inversed directly using single-hydrophone without complex measurement, intensive signal processing and optimization algorithm which once multi-parameters inversion needed. In this study, Experiments at sea proved single-parameter inversion to be effective. Good agreement is also shown between the results of this method and the matched field inversion carried out in the same experiment. The reflective date inverted by the technique also can predict propagation loss accurately. As a convenient way, the single-parameter inversion method proposed a new choice for real-time seafloor properties determination.

Observable parameters from multipath bottom reverberation in shallow water

Multipath ocean reverberation originating from the seabed in shallow isovelocity water, with particular attention to its information content in the cylindrical spreading and mode stripping regions, is considered. The reverberation is evaluated using Weston's flux integral method, both analytically with various simplifying approximations and numerically with all but one of these approximations rescinded. The functional form of the analytical solution is used to infer which physical seabed parameters can be extracted from measurements of reverberation. Coarse- and fine-grained sediments (sand and clay) are both considered. The main purpose of the numerical solutions is to check the accuracy of the analytical approximations; they also serve as a convenient surrogate for measured reverberation.

Numerical study of geoacoustic inversion in range-dependent ocean environments

Simulated acoustic data for two-dimensional waveguides were used to estimate the properties of a sea bed over which the depth of the water column varies with range. The simulated data were produced by a parabolic equation method. No approximate knowledge of the local sea-bed representation or parameter bounds was given prior to the inversions. In addition, little approximate information was given on the nature of the range dependence of the sea bed. The inversion methodology used a simulated annealing approach and a variation of the algorithm that generated the original acoustic data. For the purpose of consistency, a second method was employed, which used the same simulated annealing approach but with a range-dependent ray approach in which the sea-bed interaction is described by a complex plane wave reflection coefficient. Various combinations of frequencies and source-receiver positions commonly used in real acoustic measurements at sea were selected for the inversions. The goal of the inversion was to efficiently achieve a coarse description of the environment by several inversions; short-range data at low frequencies were employed for the purpose of efficiency. In the later stages of the inversion process, data from longer ranges and higher frequencies were included to provide additional details of the sea bed. Sea-bed parameters were assumed to vary linearly with range between geoacoustic profiles defined at specific ranges. Inversion results obtained prior to the reporting of the actual solutions are presented.

Effective parameters for matched field geoacoustic inversion in range-dependent environments

Using the well-established technique of geoacoustic inversion, one can estimate a set of acoustic sea-bed parameters from sonar array data. Simultaneously, one can search for geometric parameters such as range, water depth, and hydrophone depth. When the technique is applied in a range-dependent environment, there is a potentially much larger set of parameters to match, unless one has perfect knowledge of the bathymetry. From the point of view of optimization, one needs to handle uncertainties in bathymetry without hugely increasing the amount of computation. A simple time-domain view (which is shown to be equivalent to the adiabatic approximation) suggests that it is sufficient to use a range-independent model with an empirical "effective" depth even when the bottom is not flat. In fact, there is a set of effective environments that will suffice; one can choose whichever is the most convenient. The success of this concept is demonstrated with some test cases from a recent Geoacoustic Inversion Techniques Workshop.

Determination of the coefficients of an elastic seabed

An algorithm is described for finding the parameters of a one-layer elastic seabed which is based upon the Nelder-Mead simplex method for minimizing a function. The effectiveness of the algorithm is demonstrated by testing it on a set of twelve sediments encompassing a wide range of values of the seabed parameters.

Laser induced underwater acoustic source for remote sea-bed sensing

The remotely driven by means of CO 2 -laser pulse underwater near-surface optoacoustic source can be used for ocean medium monitoring. In the present paper this «unusual» pulse underwater signal was used for remote sea-bed sensing in shallora water regions of the Black Sea. Ultra wide band sounding pulse provided a set of narrow band reverberation responses. An appropriate sea-bed scattering model is developed provided consistence of calculated reverberation with experimental data and estimation of some sea-bed parameters as well