Trans-dimensional range-dependent geoacoustic inversion using modal dispersion data in the South China Sea

This paper presents geoacoustic inversion of modal dispersion data in the South China Sea using a single hydrophone and multiple impulsive sources at ranges from 5–100 km along a shallow-water track with slowly varying bathymetry. As a first step, the source waveform and bubble pulse are deconvolved from the recorded time series using a short-range source recording, corrected for the surface reflection. A time-frequency warping analysis is used to filter individual modes and obtain dispersion (arrival time as a function of frequency) data for three modes. Trans-dimensional Bayesian inversion is applied to the modal dispersion data, based on probabilistic sampling over an unknown number of seabed layers. Range-dependent inversion is considered, based on separating the environment into a sequence of range-independent sections, with frequency-dependent modal propagation times summed over segments. The inversion results are compared to core samples collected at sites along the survey line and to an independent headwave arrival-time analysis of the impulsive-source data.