Space-time processing, environmental-acoustic effects

The authors examine the subject of space-time processing and review fundamental environmental effects and their influence on arrays in the deep ocean sound channel. Space-time transforms are reviewed to demonstrate the analogy between spatial and temporal properties to stress the importance of convolution and matched field processing. A criterion is presented by which the resolution of such measurement systems could be calculated. The static source-receiver case is shown to be influenced by the randomness in signal phase due to scattering. Calculations and data are used to show the importance of multipath effects on the relative gain of line array measurement systems and the difficulties encountered for the determination of coherence lengths. Single path coherence lengths were found to be large and predictable using an environmental parameter and the Beran-McCoy mutual coherence functional form. However, multipath effects appeared to be dominant. The temporal fluctuation problem is briefly introduced to stress the fact that for relative source-receiver speeds of 1.5 m/s (3 knots) or greater, the fluctuations are dominated by the changes in the multipath arrivals