Performance Analysis of High-Frequency Geoacoustic Inversion Using a Vector Sensor Array

Using high-frequency vector sensor array (VSA) in underwater geoacoustic inversion, the array aperture can be greatly reduced. In this paper, the performance of geoacoustic inversion according to Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) is derived for various seabed parameters and VSA sensor data configurations. Ray tracing acoustic propagation model was used to simulate the vector sensor data. Simulation results showed that the VSA configuration which includes all the pressure and particle velocity information achieves the best optimal CRB, demonstrating the accuracy improvement of the VSA over the scalar array which using only the sound pressure information, in geoacoustic inversion.