Simulated tomographic reconstruction of ocean current profiles in a bottom‐limited sound channel

Abstract Tomographic reconstruction of the vertical current profile in a bottom‐limited sound channel requires solving a difficult ray identification problem. An approach to deal with this problem is a ray group method in which received arrival pulses are divided into several ray groups according to the characteristics of the arrival patterns. The method is validated using numerically simulated reciprocal acoustic transmission in a synthetic ocean in the Luzon Strait, where the Kuroshio Current has speeds as high as 1.2 m/s, for both narrowband and broadband signals. Four ray groups are found for the synthetic data; these are chosen based on arrival time. The differential travel time is determined by pairing up the reciprocal arrival peaks and then averaging the differential travel times within the selected time windows. Compared with the narrowband case, the estimated broadband differential travel time is more consistent with that computed from the current magnitude in the synthetic ocean. The vertical current profile is reconstructed from the broadband differential travel times by a generalized Tikhonov regularization approach. The data weighting matrix includes observation error in picking and pairing travel times and model parameter error due to path length uncertainty. The time series of the reconstructed current agrees with the synthetic ocean current; the fractional residual variance is 0.013 for the surface layer and 0.01 for the entire water column. The ray group method mitigates the ray identification problem in the bottom‐limited environment and could offer valuable data regarding the range‐integrated current velocity.