Abstract
A promising approach has been developed for treating acoustic (and EM) scattering by random media and interfaces, which permits statistically “exact” solutions to the typical integral equations determining the scattered fields and received waveforms. The scattering mechanism is expressed as the sum of independent random processes in space and time whose structural details embody the physical features (e.g., cross sections, reflection coefficients, path delay, Doppler, frequency selectivity, etc.) of the acting scattering elements, and whose statistics (e.g., moments, covariances, spectra, etc.) constitute, in any case, the observables of the scattering process. This mechanism is then applied as the forcing term in the Langevin equations governing propagation. These are readily solved (in the linear cases) by conventional or diagrammatic methods, for weak or arbitrarily strong scattering. In general, for the weak-scatter conditions in the ocean, the covariance and spectra of the received process consist of three contributions: a specular term (k=0); a purely random “specular-point” or Poisson scatter component (k=1); and the continuum scatter contribution (k=2) of earlier “classical” approaches. Other implications for underwater sound scattering are also discussed here, and in the companion paper (II) below. [Work Supported by the Naval Sea Systems Command.]
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