An extraction method of seabed reflection loss based on towed tilted line array

Abstract

Seabed acoustic parameters are very important to underwater acoustic field prediction in shallow water. The existing inversion methods generally uses a vertical line array to receive the signal and its platform is stationary, which can not be operated for a large area with high resolution. The methods for extracting seabed reflection losses based on three kinds of line arrays were studied. A fast inversion scheme for the seabed acoustic parameters was presented, which uses a towed tilted line array and three acoustic sources to cover a large scope of grazing angles. The error analysis was made for this method. The simulation results show that different arrays require different experimental configurations to cover the same scope of grazing angles. The vertical line array must operate with several acoustic sources and require a stationary platform of the array. The towed horizontal line array needs only one acoustic source but requires a large-aperture line array. The towed tilted line array combines the merits of the vertical line array and the horizontal line array, which can inverse the seabed acoustic parameters in a moving and high resolution way and requires only a line array of smaller aperture.