Exploiting the Spatio-Temporal Coherence of Ocean Ambient Noise for Passive Tomography

Extracting the coherent component of the ambient noise field propagating between a pair of passive receivers provides a means for passive acoustic sensing of the ocean environment. For instance, the arrival-times structure of the ambient noise cross-correlation time-function between a pair of receivers can yield an estimate of the arrival structure (or wavefronts) of the actual time-domain Green’s function between these receivers, as if one of the passive receiver acted as an active source. Hence cross-correlation processing of ocean ambient noise has been suggested as a potential means for developing noise-based (or passive) modalities of acoustic ocean monitoring techniques such as acoustic tomography or acoustic thermometry