Determination of the characteristics of ocean inhomogeneities by the times structure of an acoustic signal

Abstract
In this report the method of ray differential acoustic tomography of the ocean is discussed. The method is based on the fact that the mean velocity of sound pulse propagation along the ray trajectory depends on the angle of the ray exit. The method efficiency is analyzed numerically for the signal reception to the horizontal array and the single hydrophone. It is shown that the signal of illumination may be suppressed and the scattered signal may be separated by time gating. It is also shown that the depth of the deposition of a space-localized inhomogeneity may be estimated by the width of the scattered signal autocorrelation function. The distance to the inhomogeneity may be defined by the cross correlation function of the scattered signal at various array receivers. The influence of the depth of the submergence of a scatterer and the distance between a source and a receiver on the scattered signal structure is analyzed.