Abstract
A hierarchical Gaussian mixture model has been proposed to characterize sparse space-time varying shallow water acoustic response functions [Gendron, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 139, 1923-1937 (2016)]. Considered here is an extension of this model to a uniform linear vertical array in order to provide an empirical validation of the mixture model for receivers of small aperture. An acoustic environment between source and moving receiver is predicated on a small proportion of relatively coherent paths obeying an ensemble frequency-angle-Doppler distribution. Provided are quantile-quantile plots of the discrete mixture model versus the empirical channel coefficients that lend credence to its use as a sparse model for acoustic response functions. (C) 2017 Acoustical Society of America