Research Summaries

Back Measurements and Modeling of Scattering from Rock Outcrops

Fiscal Year 2018
Division Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Science
Department Oceanography
Investigator(s) Olson, Derek R.
Sponsor Office of Naval Research (Navy)
Summary Scattering from rock seafloors represents some of the most challenging environments for ASW and MCM sonar systems. Rocks exhibit extreme roughness and irregular topography that cause very high levels of scattered energy and strong departures from Rayleigh statistics. These two scattering effects contribute to high rates of false alarms in sonar systems. Additionally, rocks exhibit diverse morphology that prevents characterizing backscatter by generic rock properties. Scattering strength and statistics are closely tied to the local geological processes that forms the rock mass and interface roughness.
The research objectives in this grant are to
1. Investigate higher order scattering theories to predict scattering strength
2. Develop and investigate models to predict the scattering statistics, particularly, the PFA
3. Measure scattering strength and PFA of rocky seafloors near Monterey, CA
The first two of these objectives seek physical links between the environmental properties and the acoustic field. The results of these two lines of investigation will improve basic understanding of scattering from very rough surfaces, and numerical results will be integrated into GABIM and TRM to improve naval simulation and environmental inversion capability in rocky areas. The last of these objectives seeks to expand the environmental and acoustic data with which scattering theories can be evaluated and tested against.
Keywords Ocean acoustics acoustic scattering mathematical modeling
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal