Shallow water tomography with a sparse array during the INTIMATE'98 sea trial

Invert acoustic data using sparse arrays - at the limit with a single hydrophone - is a challenging task. The final goal is to obtain a rapid environmental assessment with systems both easier to deploy and less expensive than full vertical arrays. In this paper, it is shown that using a known broadband source signal and an array with few hydrophones, ocean acoustic tomography can be performed, even in a complex internal waves induced highly variable ocean. The inversion approach presented herein is based on an arrival matching processor and a genetic algorithm search procedure. Due to the poor accuracy on the a priori knowledge of the source range, source depth and water depth, the inversion procedure was split in two stages: in the first stage the geometric parameters where estimated and in the second stage sound speed estimates where obtained. This procedure was applied to field data, acquired during the INTIMATE'98 sea trial, in a shallow water area off the coast of France in the Gulf of Biscay. That area is expected to have a relatively high internal wave activity, specially during the summer. A 4 sec long, 700 Hz bandwidth linear frequency modulated signal was transmitted from a ship suspended sound source and received on a 4 element vertical array at a range of approximately 10.5 km, over a relatively range-independent area. The results from the inversion of the acoustic data are in line with those obtained by concurrent non-acoustic data like GPS source range, measured source depth, XBT casts and temperature sensors.