Influence of Station-to-Station Line Orientation on Sea Current Speed Observation Using Coastal Acoustic Tomography

The influence of station-to-station line orientation on sea current speed observations using Coastal Acoustic Tomography (CAT) was quantitatively investigated. For this purpose, we conducted CAT experiments at five stations in Yeosu Bay, South Korea. Through these experiments, the sea current speeds were estimated along a total of six tomographic observation lines with different orientations, and the results were compared with current speeds measured simultaneously by an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP). The comparison showed that the concordance between tomography-estimated sea current speed and ADCP-measured sea current speed tended to decrease as the acute angle between the predominant tidal current direction in Yeosu Bay and a tomographic observation line increased. This tendency is interpreted as arising because the smaller the difference between the two one-way travel times obtained during tomographic observations, the greater the effect of the travel time measurement error whose magnitude is relatively direction-independent. This interpretation was supported by a simple numerical simulation. Furthermore, quantitative analysis of these simulation results indicated that a smaller acute angle between the predominant sea current direction in the survey area and a tomographic observation line enhances the robustness of sea current speed estimation against travel time measurement errors. The results show that the station-to-station line in CAT should be arranged considering the predominant sea current direction in the survey area, which can provide an important guideline for selecting station locations.