Applied Underwater Acoustics

7.2. Physics and Phenomena

One might think, at first glance, that the water depth should not be a major factor in describing ocean acoustics, other than changing the depth parameter in the wave equation. This would be, to be blunt, just plain wrong. To see how shallow-water acoustics differs from “generic” ocean acoustics and to discuss the physics in a methodical fashion, we look at the sonar equation (which subsumes the wave equation and much signal processing) to examine individual points.

7.2.1. Source Level Term

When Robert Urick's classic applied sonar text Principles of Underwater Sound was first published in 1967 [2], the only source considerations that the sonar engineer had to worry about were physical ones, e.g., the size, weight, efficiency, ...