Geoacoustic seafloor exploration with a towed array in a shallow water area of the Strait of Sicily

This paper reports some results obtained in estimating geoacoustic sediment properties from the acoustic field received on a hydrophone horizontal array. A 40 hydrophone-4 m spaced towed array together with a low-frequency acoustic source, was operated at a shallow water site in the Strait of Sicily. In order to estimate the array deformation in real time, it has been equipped with a set of non-acoustic positioning sensors (compasses, tiltmeters, pressure gauges). More traditional methods have also been employed, in order to provide a ground truth reference environment. The authors report the results obtained by inverting the acoustic data with a radial basis functions network inversion scheme, and compare them with the reference model.