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
Universit\'e
Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), SiPLAB/CINTAL at University of Algarve, the
Instituto
Hidrogr\'afico (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)