Comments: download file (pdf )
Ref.: SiPLAB Report 04/03, University of Algarve,2003.
Abstract: Environmental inversion of acoustic signals for bottom and water column properties is being
proposed in the literature as an interesting concept for complementing direct hydrographic and oceanographic measurements
for Rapid Environmental Assessment (REA). The acoustic contribution to REA can be cast as the result of the inversion
of ocean acoustic properties to be assimilated into ocean circulation models specifically tailored and calibrated
to the scale of the area under observation. Traditional ocean tomography systems and methods for their requirements
of long and well populated receiving arrays and precise knowledge of the source/receiver geometries are not well
adapted to operational Acoustic REA (AREA).
An innovative concept that responds to the operational requirements of AREA is being proposed under a Saclantcen JRP
jointly submitted by the the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), SiPLAB/CINTAL at University of Algarve, the
Instituto Hidrográfico (IH) and the Royal Netherlands Naval College (RNLNC) and approved by Saclantcen in 2003
under the 2004 SPOW. That concept includes the development of water column and geo-acoustic inversion methods being
able to retrieve environmental true properties from signals received on a drifting network of Acoustic-Oceanographic
Buoys (AOB). A prototype of an AOB and a preliminary version of the inversion code, was tested at sea during the Maritime
Rapid Environment Assessment'2003 sea trial (MREA'03) and is described in this report together with the results
obtained.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: this work was partially supported by LOCAPASS project (Ministry of Defence, Portugal)