Techniques that incorporate propagation channel modeling into conventional matched filter processing can improve detection and localization performance of low‐frequency active sonar systems. In January 1989, an acoustic transmission experiment under known oceanographic conditions was conducted by SACLANTCEN in a deep water (2800‐m) area west of Sardinia. Large time‐bandwidth product signals were transmitted by a broadband projector and were received at a 30‐km range in the broadside beam of a horizontal line array of 64 hydrophones. Source and receiver were towed near the channel axis at depths of 100 and 150 m, respectively. The transmitted signals consisted of linear FM pulses with time‐bandwidth products that ranged from 400 to 4000. Environmental parameters, calculated from measured and archival data, were introduced in the GENERIC sonar model to compute the eigenrays at discrete frequencies closely spaced over the transmission bandwidth. The (band‐limited) impulse response of the channel was obtained...