Refraction of Sound in a Horizontally Inhomogeneous, Time-Dependent Ocean

Measurements of the three-dimensional (3-D) structure of a sound-speed field in the ocean with the spatial and temporal resolution required for prediction of acoustic fields are extremely demanding in terms of experimental assets, and they are rarely available in practice. In this study, a simple analytic technique is developed within the ray approximation to quantify the uncertainty in acoustic travel time and propagation direction that results from an incomplete knowledge or purely statistical characterization of sound-speed variability in the horizontal plane. Variation of frequency of an acoustic wave emitted by a narrowband source due to a temporal variation of environmental parameters is considered for deterministic and random media. In a random medium with locally statistically homogeneous, time-dependent 3-D fluctuations of the sound speed, calculation of the signal frequency and bearing angle variances as well as the travel-time bias due to horizontal refraction is approximately reduced to integration of respective statistical parameters of the environmental fluctuations along a ray in a background, range-dependent, deterministic medium. The technique is applied to acoustic transmissions in a coastal ocean, where tidally generated nonlinear internal waves are the prevailing source of sound-speed fluctuations, and in a deep ocean, where the fluctuations are primarily due to spatially diffuse internal waves with the Garrett–Munk spectrum. The significance of 3-D and four-dimensional (4-D) acoustic effects in deep and shallow water is discussed.     

Effects of seabed properties on acoustic wave fields in a seismo-acoustic ocean waveguide

Acoustic wave fields in an ocean waveguide with a sediment layer having continuously varying density and sound speed overlying an elastic subbottom are considered in this analysis. The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of seabed acoustic properties, including the density and sound speed of the sediment layer and subbottom, on the characteristics of the wave fields. Examination of the reflection coefficient, wavenumber spectrum, and noise intensity of the sound field through numerical analysis has shown that the variation in the acoustic properties in the sediment layer is an important factor in determining the reflected or noise sound fields. In particular, the sediment thickness-to-wavelength ratio and the types of variation of acoustic properties inside the layer give rise to many characteristics that potentially allow for acoustic inversion of the seabed properties. With regard to the wave-field components in a shallow-water environment, the various types of waves existing in a seismo-acoustic waveguide have been illustrated. The results indicate that the effects of the sediment properties on the wavenumber spectrum are primarily on the continuous and evanescent regimes of the wave field. The noise intensity generated by distributive random monopoles at various depths, together with the effect of refractive sound-speed distribution in the water column, has been obtained and analyzed.     

Remote sensing of ocean sound speed profiles by a perceptron neuralnetwork

A method is developed to estimate ocean sound speed profiles through synthesis of remotely measured environmental data and historical statistics of sound speed obtained at a remotely sensed location. Sound speed profiles are represented by an expansion of empirical orthogonal functions (EOF) of the historical sound speed variation, while the remotely sensed environmental data provide real-time information to determine the expansion coefficients. Environmental inputs are limited to sea surface temperature available from satellite infrared sensors, acoustic time-of-flight and ocean bottom temperature measurable from bottom mounted acoustic and thermal transducers. A multilayer perceptron neural network is implemented to learn the functional transformation from the measured environmental input to the desired EOF coefficient output on a set of representative sound speed profiles. Sea surface temperature, time-of-year, and time-of-flight from the acoustic multipath that maximally samples the vertical sound speed are found to be the dominant inputs. The trained network is computationally efficient and produces estimates for untrained environmental inputs with a mean error of 1.1-4.4 m/s     

BDRM理论在双轴海洋声道中的应用

由于表面声道与深海声道间的耦合效应,声波在双轴海洋声道中的传播比较复杂,因此求解双轴海洋声道中的声场就比较困难。在 WKBZ 本征函数的基础上,推导出了参考界面相位修正的一致表达式,并将浅海声传播的波束位移射线简正波(BDRM)理论应用于计算双轴海洋声道中的声场,进行了数值模拟并与传统简正波方法进行比较,结果表明应用 BDRM 理论计算的传播损失具有很高的精度和速度,可以对双轴海洋声道内声传播问题进行分析和预报。     

Parametric array Doppler sonar

A Doppler sonar technique capable of measuring ground speed and distance traveled at extreme ocean depths is described. The technique uses nonlinear acoustic effects to create the narrow beams required. Performance estimates are calculated and parameters for a test system chosen. Sonar Pond test results of transmitter beam patterns and source levels are given. The sea trials conducted in July and August of 1975, aboard the R. V. Sperry Star off New Providence Island, are described. Evaluation of data taken in water depths to 11 000 ft is made and substantial agreement with original estimates is demonstrated. The feasibility of an accurate, all ocean capability, dead reckoning navigator is thus confirmed.     

A comparison of multifrequency HF radar and ADCP measurements ofnear-surface currents during COPE-3

A high-frequency multifrequency coastal radar operating at four frequencies between 4.8 and 21.8 MHz was used as part of the third Chesapeake Bay Outflow Plume Experiment (COPE-3) during October and November, 1997. The radar system surveyed the open ocean east of the coast and just south of the mouth of Chesapeake Bay from two sites separated by about 20 km. Measurements were taken once an hour, and the eastward and northward components of ocean currents were estimated at four depths ranging from about 0.5 m to 2.5 m below the surface for each location on a 2 by 2 km grid. Direction of arrival of the signals was estimated using the MUSIC algorithm. The radar measurements were compared to currents measured by several moored acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) with range bins 2-14 m below the water surface. The vertical structure of the current was examined by utilizing four different radar wavelengths, which respond to ocean currents at different depths, and by using several ADCP range bins separated by 1-m intervals. The radar and ADCP current estimates were highly correlated and showed similar depth behavior, and there was significant correlation between radar current estimates at different wavelengths and wind speed     

Fine-scale acoustic tomographic imaging of shallow water sediments

In acoustic tomographic system capable of performing in situ two-dimensional (2D) acoustic imaging of shallow water sediments is described. This system is capable of resolving inhomogeneities greater than 10 cm and differentiating sound-speed variations greater than 2%, A tomographic inversion is performed in a 2D vertical slice of about 1 m ² (1 m×1 m) using three identical probes, with each consisting of 70 evenly distributed transducers. In normal deployments, two of the probes are oriented vertically and are separated by about 1 meter, and the third is positioned horizontally right above the two vertical probes. The additional horizontal probe greatly improves the horizontal resolution of the system compared to conventional crosshole tomographic setups. Numerical simulations are performed to evaluate the influences of arrival time detection error and transducer position error on the performance of the tomography system. For an arrival time of 500 ns (standard deviation) and a position error of 4 mm (standard deviation), sound-speed anomalies of greater than 0.8% can be correctly predicted near the upper portion (close to the horizontal probe) and are resolvable near the lower portion. A controlled laboratory experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of the system. The location of a polyurethane block (Conap EN22) used as a known target is correctly predicted while the inverted sound speed is about 9% lower than that from its actual value. Field data taken from a saturated muddy site are presented and analyzed. The inverted mean sound speed and attenuation are about 1480 ms^-1 and 20 dBm^-1, respectively     

Characterization of shallow ocean sediments using the airborne electromagnetic method

Experimental airborne electromagnetic (AEM) survey data collected in Cape Cod Bay are used to derive continuous profiles of water depth, electrical depth, water conductivity, and bottom sediment conductivity. Through a few well-known empirical relationships, the conductivities are used, in turn, to derive density, porosity, sound speed, and acoustic reflectivity of the ocean bottom. A commercially available Dighem III AEM system was used for the survey without any significant modification. The helicopter-borne system operated at 385 and 7200 Hz; both were in a horizontal coplanar configuration. The interpreted profiles show good agreement with available ground truth data. Where no such data are available, the results appear to be very reasonable. Compared with the shipborne electrode array method, the AEM method can determine the necessary parameters at a much higher speed with a better lateral resolution over a wide range of water depths from 0 to perhaps 100 m. The bottom sediment conductivity that can be measured by the AEM method is closely related to physical properties of sediments, such as porosity, density, sound speed, and, indirectly, sediment types that might carry broad implications for various offshore activities.     

Performance Analysis for Matched-Field Source Localization: Simulations and Experimental Results

Matched-field methods concern estimation of source locations and/or ocean environmental parameters by exploiting full wave modeling of acoustic waveguide propagation. Typical estimation performance demonstrates two fundamental limitations. First, sidelobe ambiguities dominate the estimation at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), leading to a threshold performance behavior. Second, most matched-field algorithms show a strong sensitivity to environmental/system mismatch, introducing biased estimates at high SNR. In this paper, some theoretical developments on matched-field performance analysis are summarized, including Bayesian performance bounds and probabilistic ambiguity analysis, both incorporating environmental/system uncertainty/mismatch. Performance analysis is then implemented for source localization in a typical shallow water environment chosen from the Shallow Water Evaluation Cell Experiments (SWellEX). The performance predictions describe the simulations of the maximum-likelihood estimator (MLE) well, including the mean-square error (MSE) in all SNR regions as well as the bias at high SNR. The threshold SNR and bias predictions are also validated through SWellEX experimental data processing. The results suggest the current environmental, acoustic, and statistical modeling has developed to such a level that the optimum theoretical matched-field performance can be achieved in a well-controlled experiment.     

浅海双跃层脉冲声传播

利用在东海测量的双跃层声速剖面和修改的单跃层声速剖面,数值模拟了2种跃层条件下不同收发深度声脉冲传播的波形。模拟结果表明,当声源或接收器位于上混合层时,信号波形在2种条件下都出现梳状多途结构。当声源和接收器都位于下混合层时,信号波形在2种条件下均相似。当声源位于中间均匀层时,信号波形在除上混合层以外的4层都有显著差异。用简正波的深度-简正波号域的幅度和相应的群速度解释了双跃层和单跃层声速剖面条件下信号波形特点以及异同的原因。     

Acoustic bubble counting technique using sound speed extracted fromsound attenuation

Sound attenuation has been solely used to estimate bubble size distributions of bubbly water in the conventional acoustic bubble sizing methods. These conventional methods are useful for the void fraction around 10^-6 or lower. However, the change of compressibility in the bubbly water also should be considered in bubble sizing for the void fraction around 10^-5 or higher. Recently the sound speed as well as sound attenuation was considered for acoustic bubble size estimation in bubbly water. In this paper, the sound speed estimated from sound attenuation in bubbly water by an iterative method is used for a bubble counting. This new iterative inverse bubble sizing technique is numerically tested for bubble distributions of single-size Gaussian, and power-law functions. The numerical simulation results are in agreement with the given bubble distributions even for the high void fractions of 10^-4-10^-3. It suggests that the iterative inverse technique can be a very powerful tool for practical use in acoustic bubble counting in the ocean     

Gassy sediment occurrence and properties: Northern Gulf of Mexico

Free gas is ubiquitous at shallow sediment depths of the northern margin of the Gulf of Mexico. Gassy sediment patches are between 250 and 500 m in horizontal size. Often the gassy layers are within 100 m from the sea floor and are only a few meters thick. Both biogenic and thermogenic gas hydrates have been recovered. Stability values of temperature and pressure indicate that hydrates can exist in water depths less than 500 m. Gassy sediment geoacoustic parameter values are not well constrained because of a lack of concurrent measurements of acoustic properties and sediment gas content. For Gulf of Mexico gassy sediment, some reportedin situ values of sound speed are reduced by an order of magnitude below values for water saturated sediments. More commonly, sound speed is reduced from water saturated sediment values by only 15 to 50 percent.     

Oceanic sound speed profile inversion

A modal (full-wave) method has been developed to predict ocean sound speed profiles from propagated acoustic field data. The method assumes a point source of sound in the ocean and uses as data the values of the transmitted acoustic field at an array. The formalism for depth-dependent sound speeds consists of the standard Hankel integral transform of the depth solution. In the travel length coordinate, the latter is written exactly, using the Green's function, in terms of an integral equation whose kernel includes the sound speed profile correction. A Born approximation to this equation is used. This is just the WKB solution, and permits the use of a nontrivial input (or guess) profile, here chosen as bilinear. The use of asymptotic methods enables us to write the data as an integral transform over the profile correction. The transform can be inverted. An example is presented for full-bandwidth inversion.     

Antipodal acoustic thermometry: 1960, 2004

On 21 March 1960, sounds from three 300-lb depth charges deployed at 5.5-min intervals off Perth, Australia were recorded by the SOFAR station at Bermuda. The recorded travel time of these signals, about 13,375 s, is a historical measure of the ocean temperature averaged across several ocean basins. The 1960 travel time measurement has about 3-s precision. High-resolution global ocean state estimates for 2004 from the “Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, Phase II” (ECCO2) project were combined with ray tracing to determine the paths followed by the acoustic signals. The acoustic paths are refracted geodesics that are slightly deflected by either small-scale topographic features in the Southern Ocean or the coast of Brazil. The refractive influences of intense, small-scale oceanographic features, such as Agulhas Rings or eddies in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, greatly reduce the necessary topographic deflection and cause the acoustic paths to meander in time. The ECCO2 ocean state estimates, which are constrained by model dynamics and available data, were used to compute present-day travel times. Measured and computed arrival coda were in good agreement. Based on recent estimates of warming of the upper ocean, the travel-time change over the past half-century was nominally expected to be about −9 s, but little difference between measured (1960) and computed (2004) travel times was found. Taking into account uncertainties in the 1960 measurements, the 2004 ocean state estimates, and other approximations, the ocean temperature averaged along the sound channel axis over the antipodal paths has warmed at a rate less than about 4.6 m °C yr⁻¹ (95% confidence). At this time, the estimated uncertainties are comparable in size to the expected warming signal, however.     

Turning depths of internal tides in the South China Sea inferred from profile data

Theoretically, propagating internal tides in the ocean may reflect at turning depths, where buoyancy frequencies equal tidal frequencies, before colliding with the air-sea interface or rugged bottom topography. Globally, the internal tide lower turning depths（ITLTDs） in the open ocean have been mapped; however, knowledge of the presence of ITLTDs in the South China Sea（SCS） is lacking. In this study, 2 125 high-quality temperature-salinity profiles（including 58 deep-sea hydrographic measurements...     

Precise Multibeam Acoustic Bathymetry

The maximum error in ocean depth measurement as specified by the International Hydrographic Organization is 1% for depth greater than 30m. Current acoustic multibeam bathymetric systems used for depth measurement are subject to errors from various sources which may significantly exceed this limit. The lack of sound speed profiles may be one significant source of error. Because of the limited ability of sound speed profile measurement, depth values are usually estimated using an assumed profile. If actual sound speed profiles are known, depth estimate errors can be corrected using ray-tracing methods. For depth measurements, the calculation of the location at which a sound pulse impinges on the sea bottom varies with the variation of the sound speed profile. We demonstrate that this location is almost unchanged for a family of sound speed profiles with the same surface value and the same area under them. Based on this observation, we can construct a simple constant-gradient equivalent sound speed profile to correct errors. Compared with ray-tracing methods, the equivalent sound speed profile method is more efficient. If a vertical depth is known (or independently measured), then depth correction for a multibeam system can be accomplished without knowledge of the actual sound speed profile. This leads to a new type of precise acoustic multibeam bathymetric system.     

Shallow-water sound transmission measurements on the New Jerseycontinental shelf

Calibrated acoustic measurements were made under calm sea state conditions on the New Jersey shelf near the AMCOR 6010 borehole, a surveyed area with known geophysical properties. The experiment was conducted in 73 m water with supporting measurements of salinity, temperature, and sound speed. Acoustic measurements were obtained with a vertical array of 24 hydrophones spaced equally at 2.5 m intervals; one of which was near the bottom. A source towed at 1/2 the water depth transmitted one of two sets of four tones spaced between 50 and 600 Hz for each run to ranges of 4 and 26 km. The data were processed with both a Hankel transform and a high resolution Doppler technique to yield horizontal wave-number spectrum at several depths. Results were obtained along both constant and gradually varying depth profiles. Similar modal interference patterns were observed at the lower frequencies. The constant depth-profile radial results were compared to calculations performed with several shallow water acoustic models using geoacoustic profiles derived from geophysical parameters and shear wave inversion methods     

Precise Multibeam Acoustic Bathymetry

The maximum error in ocean depth measurement as specified by the International Hydrographic Organization is 1% for depth greater than 30m. Current acoustic multibeam bathymetric systems used for depth measurement are subject to errors from various sources which may significantly exceed this limit. The lack of sound speed profiles may be one significant source of error. Because of the limited ability of sound speed profile measurement, depth values are usually estimated using an assumed profile. If actual sound speed profiles are known, depth estimate errors can be corrected using ray-tracing methods. For depth measurements, the calculation of the location at which a sound pulse impinges on the sea bottom varies with the variation of the sound speed profile. We demonstrate that this location is almost unchanged for a family of sound speed profiles with the same surface value and the same area under them. Based on this observation, we can construct a simple constant-gradient equivalent sound speed profile to correct errors. Compared with ray-tracing methods, the equivalent sound speed profile method is more efficient. If a vertical depth is known (or independently measured), then depth correction for a multibeam system can be accomplished without knowledge of the actual sound speed profile. This leads to a new type of precise acoustic multibeam bathymetric system.     

LOAPEX: The Long-Range Ocean Acoustic Propagation EXperiment

This paper provides an overview of the experimental goals and methods of the Long-range Ocean Acoustic Propagation EXperiment (LOAPEX), which took place in the northeast Pacific Ocean between September 10, 2004 and October 10, 2004. This experiment was designed to address a number of unresolved issues in long-range, deep-water acoustic propagation including the effect of ocean fluctuations such as internal waves on acoustic signal coherence, and the scattering of low-frequency sound, in particular, scattering into the deep acoustic shadow zone. Broadband acoustic transmissions centered near 75 Hz were made from various depths to a pair of vertical hydrophone arrays covering 3500 m of the water column, and to several bottom-mounted horizontal line arrays distributed throughout the northeast Pacific Ocean Basin. Path lengths varied from 50 km to several megameters. Beamformed receptions on the horizontal arrays contained 10–20-ms tidal signals, in agreement with a tidal model. Fifteen consecutive receptions on one of the vertical line arrays with a source range of 3200 km showed the potential for incoherent averaging. Finally, shadow zone receptions were observed on an ocean bottom seismometer at a depth of 5000 m from a source at 3200–250-km range.