Geo-acoustic inversion of experimental data from two shallow water sites

Shallow water acoustic experiments were conducted by SACLANTCEN at two sites having very different oceanographic and sea-bed properties. The EnVerse ´97 experiments took place near Sicily, Italy where the bottom is mostly sand and rock. The PROSIM ´97 experiments were south of Elba Island, Italy where the sea-bed contains a clay layer with sound speed less than the water column overlying silt. In both experiments, the acoustic signals were transmitted from a towed source and received on a vertical array of hydrophones. These data were inverted for the geo-acoustic properties of the sea-bed, and the results are compared with standard geophysical measurements. Using identical inversion procedures, favorable results were obtained for 13 unknown geometrical and geo-acoustic parameters for both sets of experimental data