A piecewise matched-field tracking algorithm

Matched-field tracking (MFT) algorithms have been successfully applied to both simulated and measured data to determine the most likely positions of a sound source that is localized ambiguously by a matched-field processing (MFP) system. They have been used to track sources moving linearly or on a circular path at constant speed and heading. The input to the trackers is a set of ambiguity surfaces, contiguous in time, generated by MFP. These algorithms assume that the track start and end times are known a priori; this restriction is removed in the piecewise MFT algorithm (PTA). The PTA was applied to narrow-band measured data collected during the PACIFIC SHELF 93 trial to successfully identify the significant source track segments.