An opportunity for improved observation of ocean currents in the coastal zone

The authors present a new low-frequency acoustic technique for three dimensional current monitoring which is based on an innovative use of reciprocal acoustic transmission and matched-field processing. Robustness and accuracy of the inversion in the presence of acoustic ambient noise and uncertainties in the knowledge of the ocean bottom topography, sound velocity field, and other environmental parameters as well as in positions of acoustic transceivers are addressed via numerical simulations. The amount of input data required for the successful MNT inversion is evaluated in terms of the number of acoustic transceivers comprising the monitoring system and of their signal's parameters.