Geoacoustic inversion by using broadband ship noise recorded on the New Jersey Shelf

During the New Jersey Shelf RAGS03 experiment, acoustic signals emitted by ships of opportunity (merchant ships) are simultaneously recorded on three vertical line arrays (VLAs) and a horizontal line array (HLA). Recorded broadband (50–750 Hz) acoustic data sets are used to demonstrate the source localization capability as well as geoacoustic inversion capability. Waveguide invariant theory applied to beamforming by two vertical arrays that provided a range ratio of the source to the receivers. Beamforming by a horizontal array provided time‐evolving spectrum for a particular look direction (LOFARgram). The trajectories of the striations observed both in vertical array beamformer output and LOFARgrams are used to estimate the source speed, range, and azimuthal direction as well as bottom geoacoustic parameters. Trajectories of striations are identified by the Hough transform that converts a difficult global detection problem in the image domain into a simpler local peak detection problem. Analysis of both simulated and RAGS03 data indicate the feasibility of source localization and geoacoustic inversion by using broadband noise signals emitted by distant surface ships. [Work supported by ONR.]