Time machine in ocean acoustics.

The Reflections series takes a look back on historical articles from The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America that have had a significant impact on the science and practice of acoustics.

Analyzing sound speed fluctuations in shallow water from group-velocity versus phase-velocity data representation.

Data collected over more than eight consecutive hours between two source-receiver arrays in a shallow water environment are analyzed through the physics of the waveguide invariant. In particular, the use of vertical arrays on both the source and receiver sides provides source and receiver angles in addition to travel-times associated with a set of eigenray paths in the waveguide. From the travel-times and the source-receiver angles, the eigenrays are projected into a group-velocity versus phase-velocity (Vg-Vp) plot for each acquisition. The time evolution of the Vg-Vp representation over the 8.5-h long experiment is discussed. Group speed fluctuations observed for a set of eigenrays with turning points at different depths in the water column are compared to the Brunt-Väisälä frequency.

Ray-based blind deconvolution in ocean sound channels.

This letter describes a ray-based blind deconvolution technique for ocean sound channels that produces broadband estimates of the source-to-array impulse response and the original source waveform from array-measured signals corrupted by (unknown) multipath propagation. The technique merely requires elementary knowledge of array geometry and sound speed at the array location. It is based on identifying a ray arrival direction to separate source waveform and acoustic-propagation phase contributions to the received signals. This technique successfully decoded underwater telecommunication sequences in the bandwidth 3-4 kHz that were broadcast 4 km in a 120-m-deep ocean sound channel without a-priori knowledge of sound channel characteristics.