What is it about?
When a sonar is used to ping the seafloor, the scattered sounds can be characterized in a number of ways. In this paper, we look at how the similarity of these scattered sounds depends on the spacing between measurement positions. The bottom of the lake where we conducted our experiment has a complex series of silt and mud layers, and we found this structure greatly impacted the measurements.
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Why is it important?
These experiments found that the sediment structure of the seafloor influences the spatial similarity of the scattered signals. If models can be built to describe our observations, then it may be possible to use these types of spatial similarity measurements to characterize the seafloor sediment structure.
Perspectives
Any research where I get to spend a few summer weeks at a lake collecting data is always a good experience. It was exciting to take what is a relatively common acoustic measurement (coherence length) and literally turn it in a new direction by pointing the sonar downward.
Dr. Daniel C Brown
Pennsylvania State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Measurements of two-dimensional spatial coherence of normal-incidence seafloor scattering, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, October 2018, Acoustical Society of America (ASA),
DOI: 10.1121/1.5056168.
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