Identification and inversion of acoustic multipath data at long range in the ocean.

Due to the presence of the ocean sound channel, in general, many ray paths (multipaths) connect a given acoustic source receiver pair in the ocean. The number and structure of the multipaths depend on the details of the sound channel and the positions of the source and receiver. As each multipath samples the ocean differently each contains unique information about the sound speed structure of the ocean. In order to exploit this information one must first identify each of the measured multipath arrivals. Here the author addresses the related problems of identifying multipath arrivals and the subsequent inversion of this data for the ocean structure. (A)