Matched-field processing in a range-dependent shallow water environment in the Northeast Pacific Ocean

This paper describes matched-field processing (MFP) of data collected in shallow water off the western coast of Vancouver Island in the Northeast Pacific Ocean. The data were collected from a vertical line array (VLA) as part of the PACIFIC SHELF trial carried out on the continental shelf and slope during September 1993, sensors in the 16-element VLA were evenly spaced at depths between 90 and 315 m, while the sound source was towed along radial paths or arcs. In this paper, we present results of the analysis of data from a continuous wave (CW) source which was towed downslope at a depth of 30 m in water from 150 to 375 m deep, in order to model the range-dependence of the acoustic propagation efficiently, the replica fields were calculated using the adiabatic normal mode approximation. This approximation was considered appropriate for the bottom slopes of the environment. Using sparse bathymetric data, a water sound speed profile and estimates of bottom properties, MFP correlations on individual ambiguity surfaces were found to be greater than 0.9 for the strongest signals. On account of environmental mismatch, the source position could not be determined unambiguously from most of the ambiguity surfaces even at high signal-to-noise ratios. Nevertheless, when an efficient linear tracker was applied to the ambiguity surfaces to find tracks, the source track was recovered at both low and high signal-to-noise ratios, this tracker performs the analysis at a constant depth and reports the track with the highest estimated track signal-to-noise ratio.