Spatial covariance and adaptive beam forming of high-frequency acoustic signals forward scattered from the sea surface

The author addresses the spatial coherence of high-frequency acoustic signals that have been forward scattered from the sea surface. The Fresnel-corrected Kirchhoff approximation is applied to derive closed-form expressions for the spatial coherence. These expressions are used to study the influence of geometrical and environmental factors on the coherence. An application of the theory involving the rejection of the surface image of a source by a vertical adaptive line array is presented. The author concludes that the environment has a strong impact on the array processing of surface-scattered fields through its influence on both vertical and horizontal spatial coherence