A joint seismo-geoacoustic inversion in shallow water using a subsurface towed sound source

A single-hydrophone geoacoustic inversion procedure using a calibrated source is proposed and tested with experimental shallow water data. In a first step the number of sediment layers, their thicknesses and velocities are estimated using a conventional seismic approach. In a second step, the amplitude variations of each reflected arrival are used to estimate the reflection coefficients versus the incidence angle. The results are compared to numerical model solutions. With this second step, velocity estimations are refined in order to predict the observed critical angles. Attenuation and density are estimated from the absolute level of the reflection coefficient. Finally, experimental and synthetic data generated after inversion are compared.