Inversion of sound speed profile based on waveform structure matching

Traditional sound speed profile (SSP) inversion algorithms based on single hydrophone often use multipath arrival time differences as the cost function. The accurate determination of arrival time is the key procedure for this method, which is always difficult to realize in some cases. A new inversion method of SSP based on signal waveform structure matching is presented in this paper. The waveform structures of observed and replica signal are exacted and matching processed firstly, and then SSP is inversed with the correlation coefficient between them. The results indicate that this method has higher accuracy than the traditional method when signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is the same. In addition, the performance of this method depends on sediment geoacoustic parameters (sound speed, density and absorption coefficient).