SUMMARY

In shallow water environments, sound propagation experiences multiple interactions with the surface/bottom interfaces, with hydrodynamic disturbances such as internal waves, and with tides and fronts. It is thus very difficult to make satisfactory predictions of sound propagation in shallow water. Given that many of the ocean characteristics can be modeled as stochastic processes, the statistical measure, spatial coherence, is consequently an important quantity. Spatial coherence provides valuable information for array performance predictions. However, studies of spatial coherence influenced by various environmental parameters are limited. The comprehensive Asian Seas International Experiment 2001 (ASIAEX01) examined acoustic propagation and scattering in shallow water. Environmental oceanographic data were taken simultaneously with the acoustic data. ASIAEX01 provided a unique data set which enabled separate study of the characteristics of the oceanographic features and their influence on long range sound propagation. In this thesis, the environmental descriptors considered include sediment sound speed and attenuation, background internal waves, episodic non-linear internal waves, and air-sea interface conditions. Using this environmental data, the acoustic data are analyzed to show the characteristics of spatial coherence in a shallow water waveguide. It is shown that spatial coherence can be used as an inversion parameter to extract geoacoustic information for the seabed. Environmental phenomena including internal waves and wind-generated surface waves are also studied. The spatial and temporal variations in the sound field induced by them are presented. In addition, a tank experiment is presented which simulates propagation in a shallow water waveguide over a short range. Based on the data model comparison results, the model proposed here is effective in addressing the major environmental effects on sound propagation in shallow water.