Ocean reverberation: Modeling, measurements and inversions

Research on ocean reverberation has practical and scientific significance. Much progress has been made in the past three decades to improve our understanding of reverberation. However, there remain important unanswered questions and a real scarcity of high-quality basic research data sets. New progress on the reverberation modeling and the low-frequency (LF) seabed scattering characterization in shallow water (SW) requires three essential conditions: 1). A reliable reverberation model using a physics-based seabed scattering function, 2). Carefully calibrated broadband reverberation data, and 3). A ground truth about the seabed geoacoustic model. Some related work on these topics is introduced in this paper. The energy flux method for SW reverberation is briefly introduced. Integration of this method with physics-based seabed scattering models directly and intuitively results in a general expression for SW reverberation. A simple relationship between the classic scattering cross-section and the modal scattering matrix is derived. Some basic research data sets, including the reverberation level/vertical coherence as a function of time, frequency, depth/hydrophone separation and sea state, are reported. Reverberation data and model predictions are in good agreement, which results in some inversion results. The HF seabed scattering models and the energy flux method-derived reverberation model are validated using LF reverberation broadband data.