AN ASSESSMENT OF THE PERFORMANCE OF GLOBAL OPTIMIZATION METHODS FOR GEO-ACOUSTIC INVERSION

Having available efficient global optimization methods is of high importance when going to a practical application of geo-acoustic inversion, where fast processing of the data is an essential requirement. A series of global optimization techniques are available and have been described in literature. In this paper three optimization techniques are considered, being a genetic algorithm (GA), differential evolution (DE), and the downhill simplex algorithm (DHS). The performance of these three methods is assessed using a test function, demonstrating superior performace of DE. Additionally, the DE optimal setting is determined. As a next step DE is applied for dtermining the geo-acoustic properties of the upper seabed sediments from simulated seabed reflection loss, indicating good DE performance also for real geo-acoustic inversion problems.