Accurate group velocity estimation for unmanned aerial vehicle-based acoustic atmospheric tomography

Acoustic atmospheric tomography calculates temperature and wind velocity fields in a slice or volume of atmosphere based on travel time estimates between strategically located sources and receivers. The technique discussed in this paper uses the natural acoustic signature of an unmanned aerial vehicle as it overflies an array of microphones on the ground. The sound emitted by the aircraft is recorded on-board and by the ground microphones. The group velocities of the intersecting sound rays are then derived by comparing these measurements. Tomographic inversion is used to estimate the temperature and wind fields from the group velocity measurements. This paper describes a technique for deriving travel time (and hence group velocity) with an accuracy of 0.1% using these assets. This is shown to be sufficient to obtain highly plausible tomographic inversion results that correlate well with independent SODAR measurements.