The INTIFANTE'00 sea trial: preliminary source localization and ocean tomography data analysis

Abstract

The INTIFANTE'00 sea trial was a multidisciplinary experiment including testing of an autonomous surface vehicle, underwater communications, source localization and acoustic ocean tomography. The results shown concentrate on the source localization and ocean tomography data sets. The data gathered during a 24 hour run along a range independent track shows strong oceanographic features, possibly due to internal tide signature, both on the temperature data, as measured on the thermistor chain collocated with a vertical line array (VLA), and on the acoustic data. A range dependent track between 120 and 60 m water depth, shows a highly variable channel impulse response along time and range when the source was moving outwards from the VLA. In another acoustic track, the source was navigatated across a underwater canyon where the energy was rapidly distributed over a deep acoustic channel with sound trapped well below the thermocline. Good agreement between the modeled and measured channel responses represents the first step towards matched-fleld processing-like methods such as source localization and tracking and ocean tomography.