Mapping Clutter In Situ: Broadband Results

This paper presents experimental results of applying two methods to help mitigate the seabed clutter problem by spatially isolating significant reverberant features in situ: 1) a “clutter mapping” technique applied to broadband (400 to 2500 Hz) acoustic data collected in the vicinity of the Stanton Banks off of Scotland during the T-MAST 02 experiment; and 2) the use of a cardioid receiver array on the Malta Plateau off of Sicily during the Boundary 2004 experiment. It is shown that while there are a number of correspondences between strong clutter events and the leading edges of known bathymetric features, there are also a number of clutter returns with no obvious corresponding bathymetric relief. The implications are that relying on archival bathymetric (and wreck) databases will in general be insufficient, and that in-situ reverberation assessments need to be conducted that yield not just the mean (intensity) characteristics, but also the statistics.