Abstract
Ocean Acoustic Tomography (OAT) allows the oceanic mesoscale variability to be monitored
both widely and rapidly using sound propagation techniques. The systems of the OAT are classi
fied into two types by the horizontal OAT transceiver deployments [i.e., linear: two-dimensional
(2D) system; planar: three-dimensional (3-D) system]: however the difference between the per
formances of these two types of system has not been studied. Generally, the 3-D analyzing system
has been regarded as the composite system of the 2-D ones. We evaluated the difference using the
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) model field as input. The simulations suggest
that the advantage of applying 3-D analyzing system in estimating temperature field because of a
high linear-independence of acoustic rays of the 3-D system.
