Robert C. Spindel

A test of basin-scale acoustic thermometry using a large-aperture vertical array at 3250-km range in the eastern North Pacific Ocean

Broadband acoustic signals were transmitted during November 1994 from a 75-Hz source suspended near the depth of the sound-channel axis to a 700-m long vertical receiving array approximately 3250 km distant in the eastern North Pacific Ocean. The early part of the arrival pattern consists of raylike wave fronts that are resolvable, identifiable, and stable. The later part of the arrival pattern does not contain identifiable raylike arrivals, due to scattering from internal-wave-induced sound-speed fluctuations. The observed ray travel times differ from ray predictions based on the sound-speed field constructed using nearly concurrent temperature and salinity measurements by more than a priori variability estimates, suggesting that the equation used to compute sound speed requires refinement. The range-averaged ocean sound speed can be determined with an uncertainty of about 0.05 m/s from the observed ray travel times together with the time at which the near-axial acoustic reception ends, used as a surroga...

The Heard Island Feasibility Test

In January 1991, the Heard Island Feasibility Test (HIFT) was carried out to establish the limits of usable, long‐range acoustic transmissions. Coded acoustic signals transmitted from a source near Heard Island in the southern Indian Ocean were monitored at 16 sites in the North and South Atlantic, the North and South Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the Southern Ocean. The question posed by HIFT, whether at such global ranges the signals would permit phase‐coherent processing and thus yield favorable signal‐to‐noise levels, was answered in the affirmative. There was no evidence of distress by the local marine mammal population in response to the acoustic transmissions. HIFT was prerequisite to a program for Acoustic Thermometry of Ocean Climate (ATOC). The principal challenges to such a program are discussed.

Comparisons of measured and predicted acoustic fluctuations for a 3250-km propagation experiment in the eastern North Pacific Ocean

During the Acoustic Engineering Test (AET) of the Acoustic Thermometry of Ocean Climate (ATOC) program, acoustic signals were transmitted from a broadband source with 75-Hz center frequency to a 700-m-long vertical array of 20 hydrophones at a distance of 3252 km; receptions occurred over a period of six days. Each received pulse showed early identifiable timefronts, followed by about 2 s of highly variable energy. For the identifiable timefronts, observations of travel-time variance, average pulse shape, and the probability density function (PDF) of intensity are presented, and calculations of internal-wave contributions to those fluctuations are compared to the observations. Individual timefronts have rms travel time fluctuations of 11 to 19 ms, with time scales of less than 2 h. The pulse time spreads are between 0 and 5.3 ms rms, which suggest that internal-wave-induced travel-time biases are of the same magnitude. The PDFs of intensity for individual ray arrivals are compared to log-normal and expone...

Multimegameter-range acoustic data obtained by bottom-mounted hydrophone arrays for measurement of ocean temperature

Acoustic signals transmitted from the ATOC source on Pioneer Seamount off the coast of California have been received at various sites around the Pacific Basin since January 1996. We describe data obtained using bottom-mounted receivers, including US Navy Sound Surveillance System arrays, at ranges up to 5 Mm from the Pioneer Seamount source. Stable identifiable ray arrivals are observed in several cases, but some receiving arrays are not well suited to detecting the direct ray arrivals. At 5-Mm range, travel-time variations at tidal frequencies (about 50 ms peak to peak) agree well with predicted values, providing verification of the acoustic measurements as well as the tidal model. On the longest and northernmost acoustic paths, the time series of resolved ray travel times show an annual cycle peak-to-peak variation of about 1 s and other fluctuations caused by natural oceanic variability. An annual cycle is not evident in travel times from shorter acoustic paths in the eastern Pacific, though only one realization of the annual cycle is available. The low-pass-filtered travel times are estimated to an accuracy of about 10 ms. This travel-time uncertainty corresponds to errors in range- and depth-averaged temperature of only a few millidegrees, while the annual peak-to-peak variation in temperature averaged horizontally over the acoustic path and vertically over the upper 1 km of ocean is up to 0.5/spl deg/C.

Measured wave‐front fluctuations in 1000‐km pulse propagation in the Pacific Ocean

A 1000‐km acoustical transmission experiment has been carried out in the North Pacific, with pulses broadcast between a moored broadband source (250‐Hz center frequency) and a moored sparse vertical line of receivers. Two data records are reported: a period of 9 days at a pulse rate of one per hour, and a 21‐h period on the seventh day at six per hour. Many wave‐front segments were observed at each hydrophone depth, and arrival times were tracked and studied as functions of time and depth. Arrivals within the final section of the pulse are not trackable in time or space at the chosen sampling rates, however. Broadband fluctuations, which are uncorrelated over 10‐min sampling and 60‐m vertical spacing, are observed with about 40 (ms)2 variance. The variance of all other fluctuations (denoted as low‐frequency) is comparable or smaller than the broadband value; this low‐frequency variance can be separated into two parts: a wave‐front segment displacement (with vertical correlation length greater than 1 km) t...

North pacific acoustic laboratory

A series of long-range acoustic propagation experiments have been conducted in the North Pacific Ocean during the last 15 years using various combinations of low-frequency, wide-bandwidth transmitters and horizontal and vertical line array receivers, including a 2-dimensional array with a maximum vertical aperture of 1400 m and a horizontal aperture of 3600 m. These measurements were undertaken to further our understanding of the physics of low-frequency, broadband propagation and the effects of environmental variability on signal stability and coherence. In this volume some of the results are presented. In the present paper the central issues these experiments have addressed are briefly summarized.

Reciprocal acoustic transmissions: Instrumentation for Mesoscale monitoring of ocean currents

By simultaneously transmitting acoustic pulses in opposite directions between two points in midocean, one can separate the effects of ocean currents on acoustic propagation from the effects of sound-speed structure. Reciprocal acoustic transmissions can therefore be used to measure ocean currents. Acoustic transceivers have been designed and built to measure the mean currents between two points separated by 300 km. The equipment functioned satisfactorily during a sbort test conducted during 1983. Preliminary analysis of that experiment has yielded differential travel times that appear reasonable, but more work is required to relate the differential travel times to meaningful ocean-current estimates.

Stability and identification of ocean acoustic multipaths

A phase‐coded signal with 64‐ms resolution was transmitted at 10‐min intervals for a 48‐day period between an acoustic source moored at 2000‐m depth and a bottom mounted receiver at ∠3000‐m depth and at ∠900‐km range. About 16 multipaths were resolved. They were stable in the presence of ocean fluctuations and could be identified (with some exceptions) from ray theory. The precision to which daily travel‐time fluctuations along multipaths could be measured was better than 10 ms. The resolution, stability, identification, and precision is adequate for acoustic monitoring of mesoscale ocean variability by measuring travel‐time variations along ray paths.

A comparison of measured and predicted broadband acoustic arrival patterns in travel time–depth coordinates at 1000‐km range

Broadband acoustic signals were transmitted from a moored 250‐Hz source to a 3‐km‐long vertical line array of hydrophones 1000 km distant in the eastern North Pacific Ocean during July 1989. The sound‐speed field along the great circle path connecting the source and receiver was measured directly by nearly 300 expendable bathythermograph (XBT), conductivity‐temperature‐depth (CTD), and air‐launched expendable bathythermograph (AXBT) casts while the transmissions were in progress. This experiment is unique in combining a vertical receiving array that extends over much of the water column, extensive concurrent environmental measurements, and broadband signals designed to measure acoustic travel times with 1‐ms precision. The time‐mean travel times of the early raylike arrivals, which are evident as wave fronts sweeping across the receiving array, and the time‐mean of the times at which the acoustic reception ends (the final cutoffs) for hydrophones near the sound channel axis, are consistent with ray predic...

Modeling the Waveguide Invariant as a Distribution

The “invariant parameter” called “beta” is often useful for describing the acoustic interference pattern in a waveguide. For some shallow water waveguides, the measured acoustic intensity might contain contributions from several propagating acoustic modes. For each pair of these modes, a different value for the waveguide invariant might apply. If the acoustic intensity is measured over some distributed aperture and finite bandwidth, it may become difficult to assign a single value to beta. In the present work, the waveguide invariant is treated as a distribution. An algorithm for estimating this distribution for a general measurement geometry is developed. The algorithm is exercised for different classes of shallow water waveguides. When the propagation is dominated by modes interacting with the sea surface, the distribution can be sharply peaked. For cases where the sound speed profile creates a duct, the distribution is more diffuse. The effects of source/receiver depth, range, bandwidth and bottom atte...