An adapted eigenvalue-based filter for ocean ambient noise processing

Accurate approximations of Green’s functions retrieved from the correlations of ambient noise require a homogeneous distribution of random and uncorrelated noise sources. In the real world, the existence of highly coherent, strong directional noise generated by ships, earthquakes, and other human activities can result in biases in the ambient-noise crosscorrelations (NCCs). We have developed an adapted eigenvalue-based filter to attenuate the interference of strong directional sources. The filter is based on the statistical model of the sample covariance matrix and can separate different components of the data covariance matrix in the eigenvalue spectrum. To improve the effectiveness and make it adaptable for different data sets, a weight is introduced to the filter. Then, the NCCs can be calculated directly from the filtered data covariance matrix. This approach is applied to a 1.02 h data set of ambient noise recorded by a permanent reservoir monitoring receiver array installed on the seabed. The power spectral density indicates that the noise recordings were contaminated by strong directional noise over nearly half of the whole observation period. Beamforming and crosscorrelation results indicate that the interference still exists even after applying traditional temporal and spectral normalization techniques, whereas the adapted eigenvalue-based filter can significantly attenuate it and help to obtain improved crosscorrelations. The approach makes it possible to retrieve reliable approximations of Green’s functions over a much shorter recording time