Probability distribution for energy of saturated broadband ocean acoustic transmission: results from Gulf of Maine 2006 experiment.

The probability distribution of ocean-acoustic broadband signal energy after saturated multipath propagation is derived using coherence theory. The frequency components obtained from Fourier decomposition of a broadband signal are each assumed to be fully saturated with energy spectral density that obey the exponential distribution with 5.6 dB standard deviation and unity scintillation index. When the signal bandwidth and measurement time are larger than the correlation bandwidth and correlation time, respectively, of its energy spectral density components, the broadband signal energy obtained by integrating the energy spectral density across the signal bandwidth then follows the Gamma distribution with a standard deviation smaller than 5.6 dB and a scintillation index less than unity. The theory is verified with broadband transmissions in the Gulf of Maine shallow water waveguide in the 300 to 1200 Hz frequency range. The standard deviations of received broadband signal energies range from 2.7 to 4.6 dB for effective bandwidths up to 42 Hz, while the standard deviations of individual energy spectral density components are roughly 5.6 dB. The energy spectral density correlation bandwidths of the received broadband signals are found to be larger for signals with higher center frequencies and are roughly 10% of each center frequency.