Abstract:
In the summer of 1995 a shallow-water ambient noise experiment was carried out 1-mile offshore of the Boca Raton Inlet. A volume array was deployed that provided both vertical and horizontal directivity measurements of the ambient noise. This paper will describe the array processing algorithm used to obtain the global directivity measurements with high resolution and present the ambient noise measurements. The results showed that the ambient noise was strongly anisotropic and dominated by biological noise from a local fishing pier located approximately 1 mile to the south. Measurements were also made of local boat traffic and it was found that the vertical arrival structure could be separated into clearly defined beams associated with each bottom bounce along the propagation path. [Work supported by ONR.]