Traveling wavefront ray tracing and its applications

Acoustic ray tracing is an important tool used in several applications. It can be used to estimate the amount of acoustic‐ray path bending and associated time delay to provide precise measurements in a marine environment. This article describes a simple method for acoustic ray tracing. The method is based on the concept of a traveling wavefront (TWF), which leads to a simple algorithm for ray tracing. The approach is suitable for arbitrary sound speed profiles, which can be approximated by differentiable functions, and arbitrary sea bottom topography. It does not require linearization and is particularly convenient for computer simulation. It can be easily generalized to include range‐dependent cases. An example of correcting the sea floor depth as measured by a multibeam bathymetry system is provided to illustrate its application to precise marine measurements.

Keywords:

• ray tracing
• underwater acoustics
• acoustic navigation
• sea‐floor topography measurement