Detection of environmental mismatch in a shallow water waveguide

Performance of source localization, particularly using matched-field proces sing techniques, is very sensitive to modeling mismatch. This paper present s a novel test for detecting modeling mismatch in a bounded propagation med ium, such as shallow water. The test is based on the fact that when there a re no model uncertainties, the modal spectrum of the received signal is str ictly limited to an a priori known set of modes, Mismatch in the modal eige nfunction of the assumed model causes the modal spectrum out of this band t o be nonzero. The proposed test requires no prior knowledge about the radia ting sources, The performance of the proposed test is evaluated via compute r simulations of a benchmark shallow mater channel, It is shown that the te st is sensitive to mismatch in the channel depth and in bottom sound speeds , The ability of the test to identify array tilt mismatch is also presented . An application of the test for validation of maximum-likelihood localizat ion results is also discussed.