Efficient use of a priori data in sediment tomography through the use of null space

Geoacoustic properties of sediments play an important role in shallow water acoustic propagation. Many techniques to infer sediment geoacoustic properties have been developed in the past. These methods are based on linear or non-linear inversion approaches and use the acoustic field or other parameters derived from it. This paper describes a modified linear inversion technique in which a priori information is used advantageously. These a priori data is projected into the model null space to modify the linear inversion output. This approach is tested using broadband acoustic data from a shallow water acoustic experiment.