Possibility of reconstructing hydrological variability of shallow sea by measuring frequency shifts of interference structure of sound field

Variations in the vertical space-frequency interference structure of the sound field in the oceanic waveguide are described. Reconstruction algorithms of sound speed field, based on information on frequency shifts of interference maxima of the sound field, are presented.     

Frequency shifts of the spatial interference structure of the sound field in shallow water

A fluctuation model of the frequency shifts of the spatial interference structure formed by the sound field in a randomly inhomogeneous oceanic waveguide is constructed. The relation between the random fields of the perturbation-caused variation of the waveguide’s dispersion characteristic and the frequency deviation of a local interference maximum is analyzed. The applicability of the results to the cases of the waveguide perturbation by the background internal waves and by the roughness of the bottom relief is considered.     

Variability of the vertical interference structure of the sound field in a shallow sea

Dynamics of the spectral intensity oscillations that occur in the vertical plane because of the time variability of the medium along the propagation path is described. The errors arising in measuring the frequency shifts of the interference structure are considered. For low-frequency broadband signals received on a stationary propagation path, experimental data on the shifts of their frequency spectra due to the variation of the reception depth are presented. The number of interfering modes and their arrival directions in the vertical plane are estimated from the measured frequency shifts of the spectral intensity oscillation.     

Effect of background internal waves on the interference structure of the sound field in a shallow sea

The results of a theoretical analysis of the effect produced by an anisotropic field of background internal waves on the localization of the interference pattern in a shallow sea are presented. The space-time variability of the interference invariant and the smearing of the observation direction of interference fringes are considered in a wide frequency range. The stability of the interference pattern formed by both the superposition of the fields of different mode groups and separate mode groups is analyzed in comparison with the unperturbed waveguide. Numerical calculations are performed for longitudinal and transverse orientations of the acoustic track relative to the propagation direction of internal waves.     

Methods of measuring frequency shifts in the interference structure of the sound field in oceanic waveguides

The efficiency of the correlation method is considered as applied to measuring frequency shifts of maxima in the interference structure of the sound speed under the influence of distortions of the sound-speed profile. The method is based on tracing the position of the maximum of the cross-correlation function corresponding to the spectrum of the transmitted signal in the frequency domain. The distortion is modeled by seasonal variations of the hydrological environment. The noise immunity of the method is analyzed. The correlation method is compared with other known methods of tracing frequency shifts of the interference maxima.     

The sensitivity of monitoring by measuring the frequency shifts of the sound field interference pattern

The sensitivity of the remote method of reconstructing the frequency spectrum of a water medium perturbation from the measured frequency shifts of the sound field interference peaks is investigated. On the basis of the Rayleigh criterion, an expression is derived for estimating the minimal frequency shift that allows the resolution of two neighboring peaks. The detection sensitivity for the sound velocity fluctuations caused by the time variability of the medium along the track is estimated. Results of computations for a perturbation in the form of background internal waves are presented.     

Effect of random hydrodynamic inhomogeneities on low frequency sound propagation loss in shallow water

Low frequency (100–500 Hz) sound propagation loss on the US Atlantic continental shelf and in the Barents Sea in the presence of stochastic surface waves, and for the US Atlantic shelf also in the presence of internal waves, is studied for the range of up to 150 km by means of numerical simulations. Qualitative difference between sound propagation loss behavior on the US Atlantic shelf and in the Barents Sea is demonstrated for summertime conditions even without random inhomogeneities. It is shown that whereas internal waves have a weak effect on propagation loss, surface waves result in its considerable increase in both areas under wintertime conditions with a wind speed of more than 9 m/s.     

Frequency shifts of the sound field interference pattern in shallow water because of second-mode soliton-like internal waves

Numerical simulation is carried out to analyze the effect of an internal soliton of the second gravity mode on low-frequency sound propagation in an oceanic shelf region. The simulation is performed using the data of a full-scale experiment performed on the shelf of the South China Sea near Dongsha atoll, where the aforementioned solitons had been detected by stationary vertical thermistor arrays. The calculations take into account the effect of horizontal refraction of sound waves. It is assumed that a stationary acoustic track is oriented across the predominant propagation direction of internal waves. The results of simulation show that, when the soliton crosses the stationary track, some of the sound field modes are focused, whereas other modes are defocused. It is demonstrated that the soliton parameters can be adequately determined from the frequency shifts of the sound field interference pattern. However, such an estimate of the soliton parameters is only possible for a limited length of the stationary track for which the effect of horizontal refraction is sufficiently weak.     

Low-mode tomography of inhomogeneities in a shallow sea

Potentialities of observing spatially localized inhomogeneities by the low-frequency low-mode pulsed diffraction tomography in a shallow sea are analyzed. A numerically simulated model is used to study the procedure of reconstructing the parameters of inhomogeneities by coprocessing the signals of the tomographic projections formed at the multistatic excitation and reception of low-frequency low-mode acoustic pulses.     

Characteristic features of the sound field formation near the bottom of a shallow sea

Detailed calculated data are presented for the angular, temporal, and energy structures of the sound field at the points of localtion of a horizontal line array of receivers (at 250-m intervals) in a shallow sea. The array is deployed near the bottom of a 200-m-deep waveguide along a sound propagation track, at distances from 20 to 30 km from a source generating a signal in the kilohertz frequency range. The influence of a sand or mud bottom on the intensity of signals arriving along single rays is numerically estimated for winter and summer conditions of sound propagation in a specific region of the Barents Sea.     

Diffraction focusing of the sound field of a vertical antenna array in a range-dependent shallow sea

Using the adiabatic approximation for the mode representation of the sound field, it is shown that the efficiency of the diffraction focusing grows when the thickness of the isovelocity water layer increases with distance.     

Determination of the mode composition of the sound field with a single-point reception in a shallow sea

A possibility of determining the mode composition of the sound field in a shallow sea is considered. The procedure involves the transmission of a short pulse by a point source and the subsequent reception of this pulse at a single point. It is shown that the problem can be solved by using linearly frequency-modulated broadband pulses at relatively short distances (about 20 km), where the attenuation of the signal is rather weak. To take into account the intramode dispersion, it is proposed to use the value of the dispersion typical of a perfect Pekeris waveguide with a stiff bottom. With the use of the calculations and the experimental data obtained in the Barents Sea, it is shown that the proposed approximation is sufficient to determine the mode composition of the sound field.     

Experimental and theoretical study of the vertical coherence of the sound field in a shallow sea

The combined effect of multiple scattering by random inhomogeneities of a waveguide and bottomcaused sound absorption is known to be a fundamental factor that governs the formation of the sound field in a shallow sea [1, 2]. A number of publications [2–6] present statistical analyses of the fluctuation phenomena that accompany the sound propagation in shallow sea regions. In these publications, most attention is paid to studying the evolution of the intensities of normal waves under the effect of scattering by the random field of internal waves. It is shown that in natural conditions, in addition to the inhomogeneities of the water column, one should take into account the irregular boundaries of the sound channel, which can also affect the correlation characteristics of the sound field. In this paper, we present experimental data on the vertical coherence of the sound field on a fixed path in the Barents Sea. We also compare the experimental data with theoretical calculations based on a model of sound scattering by the rough sea surface.     

Features of the energy structure of acoustic fields in the ocean with two-dimensional random inhomogeneities

The paper is devoted to the analytic study and numerical simulation of mid-frequency acoustic signal propagation in a two-dimensional inhomogeneous random shallow-water medium. The study was carried out by the cross section method (local modes). We present original theoretical estimates for the behavior of the average acoustic field intensity and show that at different distances, the features of propagation loss behavior are determined by the intensity of fluctuations and their horizontal scale and depend on the initial regular parameters, such as the emission frequency and size of sound losses in the bottom. We establish analytically that for the considered waveguide and sound frequency parameters, mode coupling effect has a local character and weakly influences the statistics. We establish that the specific form of the spatial spectrum of sound velocity inhomogeneities for the statistical patterns of the field intensity is insignificant during observations in the range of shallow-water distances of practical interest.     

Frequency shifts of the sound field interference pattern on oceanic shelf in summer conditions

Considerable shifts Δf/ϕ ≈ 10⁻¹ of the low-frequency sound field interference pattern in the frequency domain, associated with barotropic tide and internal tidal waves, were observed in the Shallow Water’06 experiment on the New Jersey shelf in the summer of 2006. The acoustic frequency shifts appear to be strongly dependent on the modes of the sound field. By examining different modal structure, it is possible to analyze the overall interference pattern and find which part is more sensitive either to the surface tide or the internal waves. This feature can be exploited to acoustically monitor tidal waves of different kinds.     

On some peculiarities of the energy characteristics of the interference acoustic field in a shallow sea

The results of studies of the scalar and vector energy characteristics of a real acoustic interference field in a shallow sea are presented based on notions of monochromatic fields and common field vector ratios. The importance of the quantities under consideration is that they are the components of the energy-pulse tensor of the acoustic field. The horizontal components of the complex intensity vector are represented only by its real parts, i.e., the imaginary parts of the horizontal components of the intensity vector are equal to zero; the vertical component has both real and imaginary parts. The imaginary part of the vertical component of the complex intensity vector is related to the interference field of acoustic pressure (the potential energy). The energy characteristics of the acoustic field in a shallow sea obtained during a real experiment correspond to the common theoretical field ratios.     

Summation of modes of a sound signal in a shallow sea

Results of an experiment on the summation of selected modes of a sound signal in a shallow sea (the Barents Sea, a sea depth of 120 m, a 17-km-long path) are presented. The experiment is performed with the use of a point source generating a broadband pulsed signal with a duration of 5 s and a linear frequency modulation within 100–300 Hz. The mode selection in the in-sea experiment is achieved using a vertical antenna array (32 hydrophones, length of 96 m). It is shown that the mode signals selected at the end of the path are formed with a part of the path. The modes are summed coherently (with the use of two methods) and incoherently. The noise immunity of the mode summation is estimated.     

Effect of intense internal waves on the sound field interference structure

The effect of a train of internal-wave solitons on the formation of space-frequency interference pattern of sound field in an oceanic waveguide has been analyzed. Numerical calculations have been performed for the shallow-water channel parameters corresponding to the conditions of the SWARM’95 natural experiment.