Acoustic inversion with self noise of an autonomous underwater vehicle to measure sound speed in marine sediments

This work reports on an experiment from the Maritime Rapid Environmental Assessment sea trials in 2007, where autonomous underwater vehicles were deployed for environmental assessment. Even though these underwater vehicles are very quiet platforms, this work investigates the potential of vehicle self noise for geoacoustic inversion purposes. It is shown that sound speed in marine sediments has been found by a short range inversion from vehicle self noise that was recorded with a sparse vertical receiver array. With the demonstrated inversion method, large areas can be segmented into range-independent patches that can each be characterized by separate inversions.