title: A matched-peak inversion approach for ocean acoustic travel-time tomography
abstract: A new approach for the inversion of travel-time data is proposed, based on the matching between model arrivals and observed peaks. Using the linearized model relations between sound-speed and arrival-time perturbations about a set of background states, arrival times and associated errors are calculated on a fine grid of model states discretizing the sound-speed parameter space. Each model state can explain (identify) a number of observed peaks in a particular reception lying within the uncertainty intervals of the corresponding predicted arrival times. The model states that explain the maximum number of observed peaks are considered as the more likely parametric descriptions of the reception; these model states can be described in terms of mean values and variances providing a statistical answer (matched-peak solution) to the inversion problem. A basic feature of the matched-peak inversion approach is that each reception can be treated independently, i.e., no constraints are posed from previous-reception identification or inversion results. Accordingly, there is no need for initialization of the inversion procedure and, furthermore, discontinuous travel-time data can be treated. The matched-peak inversion method is demonstrated by application to 9-month-long travel-time data from the Thetis-2 tomography experiment in the western Mediterranean sea.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Applied and Computational Mathematics, Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas, Crete, Greece.
authors.initials: EK
authors.lastname: Skarsoulis