Comparison between ocean-acoustic fluctuations in parabolic-equation simulations and estimates from integral approximations

Abstract

Line-integral approximations to the acoustic path integral have been used to estimate the magnitude of the fluctuations in an acoustic signal traveling through an ocean filled with internal waves. These approximations for the root-mean-square (rms) fluctuation and the bias of travel time, rms fluctuation in a vertical arrival angle, and the spreading of the acoustic pulse are compared here to estimates from simulations that use the parabolic equation (PE). PE propagations at 250 Hz with a maximum range of 1000 km were performed. The model environment consisted of one of two sound-speed profiles perturbed by internal waves conforming to the Garrett–Munk (GM) spectral model with strengths of 0.5, 1, and 2 times the GM reference energy level. Integral-approximation (IA) estimates of rms travel-time fluctuations were within statistical uncertainty at 1000 km for the SLICE89 profile, and in disagreement by between 20% and 60% for the Canonical profile. Bias estimates were accurate for the first few hundred kilometers of propagation, but became a strong function of time front ID beyond, with some agreeing with the PE results and others very much larger. The IA structure functions of travel time with depth are predicted to be quadratic with the form θv2c0−2(δz)2, where δz is vertical separation, c0 is a reference sound speed, and θv is the rms fluctuation in an arrival angle. At 1000 km, the PE results were close to quadratic at small δz, with values of θv in disagreement with those of the integral approximation by factors of order 2. Pulse spreads in the PE results were much smaller than predicted by the IA estimates. Results imply that acoustic tomography of internal waves at ranges up to 1000 km can use the IA estimate of travel-time variance with reasonable reliability.