The effects of environmental variability and spatial sampling on the three-dimensional inversion problem

Abstract

The overall goal of this work is to quantify the effects of environmental variability and spatial sampling on the accuracy and uncertainty of estimates of the three-dimensional ocean sound-speed field. In this work, ocean sound speed estimates are obtained with acoustic data measured by a sparse autonomous observing system using a perturbative inversion scheme [Rajan, Lynch, and Frisk, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 82, 998–1017 (1987)]. The vertical and horizontal resolution of the solution depends on the bandwidth of acoustic data and on the quantity of sources and receivers, respectively. Thus, for a simple, range-independent ocean sound speed profile, a single source–receiver pair is sufficient to estimate the water-column sound-speed field. On the other hand, an environment with significant variability may not be fully characterized by a large number of sources and receivers, resulting in uncertainty in the solution. This work explores the interrelated effects of environmental variability and spatial sampling on the accuracy and uncertainty of the inversion solution though a set of case studies. Synthetic data representative of the ocean variability on the New Jersey shelf are used.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2014
Source ID
10.1121/1.4874602

Entities

People

  • Christopher M. Bender
  • Megan S. Ballard
  • Preston S Wilson

Organizations

  • Office of Naval Research
  • University of Texas at Austin

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Acoustical Oceanography.
  • Systems Analysis and Design