Impact of source depth on coherent underwater acoustic communications.

A recent paper [Song et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 123, 856-865 (2008)] investigated ocean variability impact on coherent underwater acoustic communications (8-16 kHz) for a single near-seafloor transmitter in shallow water during an extended period (27 h). This letter extends that investigation to various source depths and receiver subarrays. Specifically, the middle water column source, which is either in or out of the thermocline, experiences performance variability of 6-7 dB in terms of output signal-to-noise ratio. Further, the source below the thermocline consistently outperforms the source above the thermocline when the receiver subarray is located below the thermocline.