Modeling Environmental Effects on Detection Performances for Variable Depth Sonars in the East Sea of Korea

In the East Sea of Korea, the ocean environments are known to have strong variations in space and time. Their effects are very important factors in sound propagation and sonar performance. We consider the environmental factors such as eddies and thermal fronts affecting underwater sound propagation and target detection performance by sonars. Unfortunately, however, the detailed structure of eddies is usually difficult to understand by using the sea surface temperatures from infrared images alone or a few profiles from the CTD (conductivity, temperature and depth) castings. The temperature fields of eddy and thermal front are simulated with typical patterns of those obtained from several observations. This paper delivers the overviews of environments and acoustic models with their simulation results on sonar performance.