Experimentally-Based Ocean Acoustic Propagation and Coherence Studies

The long-term goal is to better understand fluctuating sound propagation in two distinct ocean acoustic regimes: Stratified shallow water, where sound is highly bottom interacting, and the temperate deep-ocean sound channel. Acoustic field fluctuations have time scales varying from less than a minute to hours, and horizontal spatial scales from tens of meters to kilometers, comparable to processing time scales and system spatial scales, and thus impact exploitation of underwater sound. With proper understanding, reliable predictions of temporal and spatial variability of received underwater sound may be possible, thus improving processing and handling of signals of interest. Processing could include remediation of signal degradation and exploitation of available sonic information.