Sound Speed Profiles Inversion in Shallow Water Using a Parallel Genetic Algorithm

The sound speed profile and bottom parameters play important roles in shallow water sound propagation. And much attention has been paid to how to obtain them. In concurrence with in-situ measurements, many inversion methods, such as the matched field inversion, have been put forward to invert the sound speed profile from acoustic signals. However, the matched field inversion may cost too much time in replica field calculations. The feasibility and robustness of an acoustic tomography scheme with matched field processing in shallow water is studied here. The sound speed profile is described by the empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs). The acoustic signals from a vertical linear array in ASIAEX2001 East China Sea are analyzed to invert sound speed profiles combined with the estimated EOFs. The parallel genetic algorithm is adopted as the optimization algorithm to increase the inversion speed. The results show that the inverted sound speed profiles are in good agreement with CTD measurements. Moreover, a posteriori probability analysis is used to verify the validity of the inverted results.