Exhaustive Testing of Subspace Modal Estimation for Pekeris Waveguide

In this paper, we consider a shallow water environment modeled as an acoustic waveguide. Our study investigates the effect of varying the physical parameters (sound speed and density) of a Pekeris waveguide on the performance of a recently developed modal functions estimation algorithm. Conducted numerical experiments show that the bottom's density affects neither the number of modes nor the estimation error. Instead, they increase as the seabed sound speed rises. Moreover, results suggest that the apparition of additional modes causes a loss in the modal reconstruction accuracy. Finally, we deduced that waveguides with higher bottom velocity require a lower noise level in order to estimate correctly the modal functions.