12: Ocean Ambient Noise Studies for Improved Sonar Processing

Inherent in passive sonar are several challenges that any effective system implementation must address. One of these challenges is how to best treat multipath arrivals. In some cases these can be a hindrance while in this research they are exploited. In certain environments, different arrivals (multipath and direct) retain significant coherence with respect to each other. This fact has been noted and exploited in recent decades with the development of the class of techniques known as matched field processing (MFP). While there has been a significant amount of academic focus on developing this approach in the context of the more established array processing methodologies, its practical adoption has been hampered due to the need for unrealistically accurate environmental models.