Experimental testing of the blind ocean acoustic tomography concept

Acoustic focalization is a well known concept that aims at estimating source location through the adjustment of multiple environmental parameters. This paper uses the same concept for inverting water column sound speed in a blind fashion, where both source location and source emitted waveform are not known at the receiver - that is Blind Ocean Acoustic Tomography (BOAT). The results obtained with BOAT, using ship noise data received on a vertical line array in a shallow water area off the coast of Portugal, show that it is indeed possible to obtain reliable joint estimates of source location and water column sound speed. During that process, it was shown that source range and depth, and Bartlett power, where good indicators of the degree of focus of the model being used.This work was supported by FCT, Portugal, under projects INTIMATE (2/2.1/MAR/1698/95) and ATOMS (PDCTM/P/MAR/15296/1999). The authors are also in debt to the crew of NRP D. Carlos I of IH, that made the sea trial successful