Estimation of sound speed and attenuation in muddy sediments using spatial coherence measurements of sound propagation

In the spring of 2017, a multi-national and multi-institute shallow water propagation experiment was conducted in the New England Mud Patch in order to study the acoustic properties in muddy sediments. Different types of acoustic signals (i.e., 31-g explosive charges, combustive sound source, multi-tone, and linear frequency modulation signals) deployed at various ranges, depths and azimuths were measured by one L-shaped array, one horizontal line array, and several vertical line arrays within the 30 km × 10 km experimental area. In this paper, these measured signals are first utilized to obtain the correlation coefficients for vertical coherence (VC) and longitudinal horizontal coherence (LHC), which are sensitive to the seabed geo-acoustic parameters. These spatial coherence measurements are then applied in the VC and LHC based geo-acoustic inversion algorithms [Wan et. al. JASA, 2016] to infer sound speed and attenuation in muddy sediments. Finally, the results from VC and LHC based geo-acoustic invers...