Darrell R. Jackson
Kevin L. Williams
Appl. Phys. Lab., College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences, Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA 98105
A bistatic scattering model that treats both roughness and sediment volume scattering is used to infer time and angle spreading for sedimentary seabeds. This model is embedded in a simulation code that predicts the received intensity time series taking account of single-bounce bistatic geometry as well as transmitter and receiver directivity. Roughness scattering is treated in the Kirchhoff approximation without invoking the stationary-phase approximation. Sediment volume scattering is treated in the perturbation approximation. Both roughness and volume inhomogeneity are assumed to be random processes with power-law spectra. The relative importance of roughness and sediment volume scattering as spreading mechanisms and the energy loss due to forward scattering are examined for a range of sediment types.