Signal processing and tracking of arrivals in ocean acoustic tomography

The signal processing for ocean acoustic tomography experiments has been improved to account for the scattering of the individual arrivals. The scattering reduces signal coherence over time, bandwidth, and space. In the typical experiment, scattering is caused by the random internal-wave field and results in pulse spreading (over arrival-time and arrival-angle) and wander. The estimator-correlator is an effective procedure that improves the signal-to-noise ratio of travel-time estimates and also provides an estimate of signal coherence. The estimator-correlator smoothes the arrival pulse at the expense of resolution. After an arrival pulse has been measured, it must be associated with a model arrival, typically a ray arrival. For experiments with thousands of transmissions, this is a tedious task that is error-prone when done manually. An error metric that accounts for peak amplitude as well as travel-time and arrival-angle can be defined. The Viterbi algorithm can then be adapted to the task of automated peak tracking. Repeatable, consistent results are produced that are superior to a manual tracking procedure. The tracking can be adjusted by tuning the error metric in logical, quantifiable manner.