Automatic detection of the number of Raypaths

International audienceIn this paper, an Exponential Fitting Test (EFT) is presented in the context of ocean acoustic tomography for detecting the number of the raypaths. It is based on the fact that the profile of the ordered eigenvalues fits an exponential law for white Gaussian noise and small samples. The number of raypaths could be detected when a mismatch occurs between the observed profile and the exponential model. Its performance is studied with simulated experiment datas. EFT works for the case of small number of samples when information theoretic criteria fail