Geoacoustic inversions and localizations with adaptively beamformed data from a surface ship of opportunity source

A technique has been developed for incorporating adaptively beamformed (ABF) data into geoacoustic inversions and source localizations based on matched-field processing. Rather than adaptively adjusting matched-field weights, for this paper ABF processing is applied to construct subaperture beam data from which the inversions and localizations are derived. This application of ABF processing to inversion and localization is successfully demonstrated with data collected on a horizontal line array from a surface ship of opportunity source (SSOS). When measured data representing noise from one or more interfering sources at various levels are injected into the data collected from the SSOS, the inversion processing with ABF subaperture data is successful at interferer noise levels exceeding the SSOS levels by 10-13 dB and for which the inversion processing with conventionally beamformed data fails.