Estimating elastic sediment properties with the self-starter

The self-starter is implemented by the method of undetermined coefficients for ocean acoustics problems involving elastic sediment layers. This approa ch is efficient when the ocean bottom can be approximated by a relatively s mall number of homogeneous layers. For many problems, the self-starter only requires on the order of 10 wave number samples to provide accurate soluti ons at ranges on the order of 10 wavelengths. The geoacoustic inverse probl em can be solved in nearly real time with this approach, which can generate on the order of a thousand forward solutions per second on the current gen eration of desk-top computers. (C)2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights res erved.