Coherent reflection from surface gravity water waves during reciprocal acoustic transmissions.

During a recent experiment in Kauai, Hawaii, reciprocal transmissions were conducted between two acoustic transceivers mounted on the seafloor at a depth of 100 m. The passage of moving surface wave crests was shown to generate focused and intense coherent acoustic returns, which had increasing or decreasing delay depending on the direction of propagation relative to the direction of surface wave crests. It is shown that a rough surface two-dimensional parabolic equation model with an evolving sea surface can produce qualitative agreement with data for the dynamic surface returns.