Acoustic Characterisation of the Seafloor by Inversion of Low Frequency Bistatic Reverberation:

• Main Authors: Boek, W., Ainslie, M.A.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2006
• Subjects: Physics; Norway; Vestfjorden
• Online Access: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:efa7dca1-ba73-4629-8faa-e0d98aa93a9c

A model is presented for simulating bistatic short-range reverberation in shallow water, in order to reproduce reverberation measurements made in the Vestfjorden area (Norway). During these measurements, a low frequency active sonar source was used to transmit short CW signals of frequency 1500 Hz and duration 10 ms. The echoes were received on a towed horizontal triplet array, offset from the transmitter position horizontally by about 120 m. This horizontal offset gives the reverberation a strongly bistatic signature during the initial 0.5 s which can be exploited to measure the bistatic scattering strength. Comparisons between model predictions using a 3D scattering function and measured reverberation are discussed. The differences between these are used to infer improved values of the parameters used to characterise the bistatic scattering strength, such as rms roughness slope. Inversion results are consistent with available prior knowledge.