Sensitivity to array tilt and bow for broadband geoacoustic inversion using a towed array

During the MAPEX 2000 experiment, broadband acoustic data from an acoustic source were received on a towed array, both towed by the same ship with the source–receiver range kept nearly constant. The data were used to invert for the geoacoustic properties of the bottom along the ship track. The experiment was conducted by the SACLANTCEN in the Sicily Strait where the bottom layer profile was also surveyed using standard seismic methods. The geoacoustic inversion results from the towed array data showed good agreement with the seismic data [M. Siderius et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 112, 1523 (2002); M. Fallat et al., SACLANTCEN Report No. SM‐402, 2002] using a matched field correlation cost function that summed over frequencies coherently (for each phone) and summed over the phones incoherently. The authors reported that an approach that sums the matched‐field correlation coherently over phones and incoherently over frequencies did not yield as good a result as the method mentioned above. The array tilt and b...