Underwater noise measurements during a year long Shallow Water Canada Basin Acoustic Propagation experiment from 2016 to 2017

Abstract

A year-long, multi-institution, acoustical oceanographic measurement on the Chukchi Continental Shelf region of the Canada Basin started on October 2016 is reported. Ten vertical receiver line arrays and a horizontal receiver line array were deployed together with oceanographic sensors to measure the sound speed profiles, ice formation, and currents over an area of approximately 30 km by 50 km. Various aspects of the noise including spectral fluctuations, directionality, seasonal dependence, and intensity fluctuations are studied over time. In this paper, we present preliminary measurement results depicting spatial and temporal distribution of underwater background noise at the experiment site. [Work supported by ONR321 OA.]