Tabu for matched-field source localization and geoacoustic inversion

Tabu is a global optimization technique that has been very successful in operations research. In this paper, a Tabu-based method is developed for source localization and geoacoustic inversion with underwater sound data; the method relies on memory to guide the multiparameter search. Tabu is evaluated through a comparison to simulating annealing. Both methods are tested by inverting synthetic data for various numbers of unknown parameters. Tabu is found to be superior to the simulated annealing variant implemented here in terms both of accuracy and efficiency. Inversion results from the SWellEX-96 data set are also presented.