The use of low-frequency noise in passive tomography of the ocean

A possible design of the mode tomography of the ocean with the use of a scheme requiring no expensive low-frequency radiators is considered. The design is based on the widely discussed method of estimating the Green’s function from the cross-coherence function of noise field received in a great number of observation points. The relationship between the Green’s function and the noise coherence function is derived from the Helmholtz-Kirchhoff integral. The use of the vertical multielement arrays composed of vector receivers is suggested to decrease the duration of noise signal accumulation required for a reliable determination of the Green’s function. The solution of the tomographic problem is based on the determination of the mode structure of acoustic field from the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the cross-coherence matrix of the received noise field.