title: Uncertainty estimation in simultaneous Bayesian tracking and environmental inversion.
abstract: This paper develops a Bayesian approach for two related inverse problems: tracking an acoustic source when ocean environmental parameters are unknown, and determining environmental parameters using acoustic data from an unknown (moving) source. The formulation considers source and environmental parameters as unknown random variables constrained by noisy acoustic data and by prior information on parameter values (e.g., physical limits for environmental properties) and on inter-parameter relationships (limits on radial and vertical source speed). The goal is not simply to estimate parameter values, but to rigorously determine parameter uncertainty distributions, thereby quantifying the information content of the data/prior to resolve source and environmental parameters. Results are presented as marginal posterior probability densities (PPDs) for environmental parameters and joint marginal PPDs for source ranges and depths. Given the numerically intensive inversion, an efficient Markov-chain Monte Carlo importance-sampling approach is developed which combines Metropolis and heat-bath Gibbs' sampling, employs efficient proposal distributions based on a linearized PPD approximation, and considers nonunity sampling temperatures to ensure a complete parameter search. The approach is illustrated with two simulated examples representing tracking a quiet submerged source and geoacoustic inversion using noise from an unknown ship of opportunity. In both cases, source, seabed, and water-column parameters are unknown.
authors.affiliation: School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. sdosso@uvic.ca
authors.forename: Stan E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Dosso
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Wilmut
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D004777:Environment; D006801:Humans; D013017:Sound Localization