Sponsor
This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Task Force Ocean (TFO) Program under Grant N00014-23-1-2070.
Published In
IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-31-2025
Subjects
Oceanographic research, Acousticmeasurements/effects; In situ oceanic observations; Oceanic profilers -- Sampling, Satellite observations, Ship observations
Abstract
Knowledge of the ocean-acoustic environment is crucial for the successful planning and execution of acoustic search operations. Oceanographic uncertainties (e.g., due to uncertain water column, ambient noise, and seabed measurements) lead to uncertainties in acoustic performance parameters (e.g., transmission loss versus range and figure of merit), which in turn lead to uncertainties in estimating search planning parameters (e.g., the number and spacing of search assets required to achieve a goal probability of successful search). Nevertheless, the oceanographic, acoustic, and operational metrics capturing these uncertainties are typically reported in isolation versus in a coupled fashion, thus failing to quantify the accuracy and resolution with which the true ocean state needs to be characterized to achieve successful acoustic search performance for operations of interest. Without end-to-end, coupled ocean-acoustic-operational metrics, it is not possible to quantify ocean state accuracy and resolution requirements associated with end-user sonar operational goals. This article describes a fully coupled ocean-acoustic-operational metric calculation approach and presents example metric calculations for an illustrative barrier search operation leveraging ocean observation data collected during the spring 2021 New England shelf break acoustics signals and noise experiment conducted jointly by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and Portland State University.
Rights
Copyright (c) 2025 The Authors
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Locate the Document
https://doi.org/10.1109/joe.2025.3592695
DOI
10.1109/JOE.2025.3592695
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/44229
Publisher
IEEE
Citation Details
Stevens, W. K., & Siderius, M. (2025). Metrics for Ocean-Acoustic Measurements and Model Predictions With Application to an Acoustic Barrier Search Problem. IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1109/joe.2025.3592695