Ocean acoustic sensitivity to range-dependent environmental variability

This paper considers the sensitivity of ocean acoustic propagation data required for sonar performance prediction to range-dependent variability in physical parameters of the ocean environment. In general, the effect on acoustic fields of perturbations to environmental parameters can consist of both a variation in the field at a point and a spatial shift of the field structure. Accounting for the field shift (via a correlation-based two-dimensional search) can provide a more meaningful measure of sensitivity for many applications. The sensitivity of acoustic fields to the state of knowledge of the bathymetry and of range-dependent variability in seabed geoacoustic parameters is examined both with and without field-shift compensation.