Abstract
An experiment to study acoustic backscattering from deep-ocean sediments was conducted in July 1993 as part of the Acoustic Reverberation Special Research Program sponsored by the Office of Naval Research. An acoustic source transmitting chirp signals in the frequency range 250–650 Hz and a 24-element vertical receiving array attached to the source were suspended near the seafloor over a sediment pond in the vicinity of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The array steered in the normal incidence (endfire) direction is used to determine the sediment structure, while the array steered at oblique angles is used to determine backscattering strength. It is found that the sediment is stratified with gentle horizontal changes, except for two irregular regions, with thicknesses of about 20 m, located approximately 18 and 60 m beneath the seafloor. These inhomogeneous regions are shown to be the dominant influence on the backscattered field, and the backscattering strength of each region as a function of grazing angle is estimated. It is found that the removal of coherent reflections from subbottom stratified layers is essential to the analysis of bottom backscattering phenomena.
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