Quantifying the Impacts of Acoustic Target Detections Using a Range-Independent Model Versus Range-Dependent Model

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify and quantify the difference in detections of a subsurface target from a subsurface sensor source between range-independent and range-dependent versions of the same acoustic propagation model. Environmental data were pulled from open source databases to provide an application for the comparison and using novel measures of merit, the authors were able to quantify the difference in detection performance between models. This study suggests that provided multiple types of environments are considered, it is possible to use a range-independent model to give good approximations to the accuracy of detections, one would achieve using a full range-dependent sound propagation model.