Time warping to improve a geoacoustic inversion scheme

This paper presents new tools to improve a geoacoustic inversion scheme relying on the inversion of marine mammals vocalizations recorded on a single hydrophone. This method makes best use of the multipath propagation and time-frequency signature of vocal calls. The classical signal processing tools based on spectrogram limit both the range of the scheme and the signals panel that can be procdsed. In this paper, we introduce new tools based on temporal warping that allow high resolution paths separation. Each echo has to be transformed into a pure frequency. Therefore, they are warped according to the frequency law of the signal estimated according to the first echo. The warping tools enable a high resolution of each echo in the time-frequency warped domain. Applying the warping on a moving window, one can estimate the impulsive response (IR) of the channel and deduce the source location, grazing angle and transmission losses. Then, as warping operators conserve energy, the path levels can be estimated using the time-frequency warped representation. Through the processing of several signals, we get a curve of an estimation of the reflection coefficient that feeds the inversion algorithm. The theory of this extended method is described and its performances are evaluated on a controlled real data set in the Gulf of Lion. The range and the recording duration have been improved (range from 300 to 900 meters and duration multiplied by 2.5). With the new scheme, we have access to a set of geoacoustic parameters allowing to better describe the bottom features.