Estimation of Geoacoustic Properties of Marine Sediment Using a Hybrid Differential Evolution Inversion Method

This paper reports the inversion of midfrequency (1500-4500 Hz) chirps from a short-range transmission experiment conducted on the New Jersey Continental Shelf during the 2006 Shallow Water Experiment (SW06). The source was held at different depths and the sound signals were recorded at a vertical line array to investigate the interactions with the sea bottom at various grazing angles. Strong reflections from the sediment layer were seen in the data for all of the sources. Due to the presence of complex microstructures in the thermocline of the oceanic sound-speed profile, fluctuations both in amplitude and arrival time of the direct path arrivals were observed. Time variation of the water-column environment was also evident during the source transmissions. To mitigate the effects of the ocean environment on the seabed property estimation, a multistage optimization inversion was employed. The sound speed and the experimental geometry were inverted first using only the travel times of the water-column arrivals. The bottom sound speed and the sediment layer thickness were then inverted by matching the travel times of the bottom and sub-bottom reflections. The average of the estimated values for the sediment sound speed is 1598 m/s, consistent with in situ measurements from other experiments in the vicinity.