Waveguide mode amplitude estimation using warping and phase compensation

In shallow water, low-frequency propagation can be described by modal theory. Acoustical oceanographic measurements under this situation have traditionally relied on spatially filtering signals with arrays of synchronized hydrophones. Recent work has demonstrated how a method called warping allows isolation of individual mode arrivals on a single hydrophone, a discovery that subsequently opened the door for practical single-receiver source localization and geoacoustic inversion applications. Warping is a non-linear resampling of the signal based on a simplistic waveguide model. Because warping is robust to environmental mismatch, it provides accurate estimates of the mode phase even when the environment is poorly known. However, the approach has issues with mode amplitude estimation, particularly for the first arriving mode. As warping is not invariant to time shifting, it relies on accurate estimates of the signal's time origin, which in turn heavily impacts the first mode's amplitude estimate. Here, a revised warping operator is proposed that incorporates as much prior environmental information as possible, and is actually equivalent to compensating the relative phase of each mode. Warping and phase compensation are applied to both simulated and experimental data. The proposed methods notably improve the amplitude estimates of the first arriving mode. (C) 2017 Acoustical Society of America.