• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.273-281
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• 2014

This paper analyzes the effect of a thermocline on the long-range acoustic signal propagation using the experimental data acquired in the shallow water near Jeju island. Temperature and salinity measurement data in Korea Oceanographic Data Center (KODC) show that the seasonal thermocline exists near Jeju island, and, under the thermocline, the bottom loss property strongly affects the long-range propagation of acoustic signal along the down-ward refractive paths. We estimate the bottom loss under the thermocline using experiment data obtained near Jeju island in May, 2013. The result shows that the estimated bottom losses are below 3 dB and the higher level signal is received at the deeper receiver depths. This shows that the acoustic trapping under the thermocline can be a viable long-range signal transmission channel in the shallow water with a thermocline.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.20-35
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• 2015

Underwater acoustic channel impulse responses (CIR) are influenced by sound speed profile (SSP), and the variation of CIR has significant effects on the performance of underwater acoustic communication systems. A significant change of SSP can occur within a short period, which must be considered during the design of underwater acoustic modems. This paper statistically analyzes the effect of the variation of SSP on the long-range acoustic signal propagation in shallow-water with thermocline using numerical modeling based on the data acquired from JACE13 experiment near Jeju island. The analysis result shows that CIR changes variously according to the SSP and the depth of the transmitter and receiver. We also found that when the transmitter and receiver are deeper, the variation of sound wave propagation pattern is smaller and signal level becomes higher. All CIR obtained in this study show that a series of bottom reflections due to downward refraction and small bottom loss in the shallow water with thermocline can be very important factor for long-range signal transmission and the performance of underwater acoustic communication system in time varying ocean environment can be very sensitive to the variation of SSP even for a short period of time.