A shallow-water ocean acoustics inverse problem

A shallow-water ocean acoustics experiment is proposed from which it is possible to determine in principle the scattering data necessary to recover the sound-speed profile in the ocean bottom. These data are a “reflection coefficient,” which is not the usual one. The reflection coefficient is amplitude of the outgoing wave at infinite depth due to a unit amplitude plane wave incident from infinite depth. The unusual fact is that this reflection coefficient can be recovered from a measurement in the ocean. The essential assumptions are that the sound-speed profile is known in the ocean but unknown in the bottom, and that the measurements are made in the ocean layer.