Environmental inversion and matched-field tracking with a surface ship and an L-shaped receiver array

Acoustic data from the natural broadband signature of a quiet surface ship, recorded on the vertical leg of an L-shaped array, is used to invert for the local geo-acoustic parameters and the resulting effective environment is used for subsequent tracking of the surface ship using a matched-field tracking technique applied to the full array. The matched-field analysis includes a comparison of the incoherent product of the processed data from the horizontal and vertical subapertures with coherent processing of the data from the full L-shaped array. Subaperture processing is of interest since there is a (loose) requirement that the number of data snapshots be greater than or equal to the number of array elements. This presents averaging difficulties for large arrays when the source being observed is moving. Analyzing each array leg separately allows the use of a smaller number of snapshots from which averaged quantities are constructed. Taken separately, the vertical leg of the array provides range-depth inf...