Geoacoustic inversion of subbottom channels using multiple frequency input parameters

This thesis investigates inversion techniques used to determine the geoacoustic properties of a shallow-water waveguide. The data used were obtained in the Shallow Water '06 Modal Mapping Experiment in which four buoys drifted over a system of subbottom channels. The method used was perturbative inversion using modal eigenvalues as input parameters, which were found using an autoregressive spectral estimator. This work investigates the differences between a "channel" region and a "no channel" region based on an inferred stratigraphic model. Inversions were performed on data from a single buoy both at individual frequencies and multiple frequencies simultaneously. Since the use of multiple frequencies and a certain set of constraints proved to be an effective method of inversion, the method was applied to data from the other three buoys as well. It is shown that the "channel" and "no channel" regions have significantly different sound speed profiles.