Experiments Shallow Water Experiment 2006
Description
The SW06 experiment was a multidisciplinary, multiinstitution, multinational effort performed approximately 100 miles east of the the New Jersey coast which lasted from mid-July to mid-September in 2006. A total of 62 acoustics and oceanographic moorings were deployed and all 62 were recovered. The moorings were deployed in a 'T' geometry to create an along-shelf path along the 80 meter isobath and an acrossshelf path starting at 600 meters depth and going shoreward to a depth of 60 meters. A cluster of moorings was placed at the intersection of the two paths to create a dense sensorpopulated area to measure 3-dimensional physical oceanography. Environment moorings were deployed along both along-shelf and across-shelf paths to measure the physical oceanography long those paths. Moorings with acoustic sources were placed at the outer ends of the 'T' to propagate various signals along these paths. Five single hydrophone receivers (SHRU) were positioned on the across shelf path and a vertical and horizontal hydrophone array (VLA/HLA) was positioned close to the intersection of the 'T' to get large antenna signal receptions from all the acoustics assets that were used during SW06.
To study propagation directly along the across-shelf path and also to cover the area outside of the main mooring paths, five single hydrophone receivers (SHRU) (Section 5) were distributed on the across-shelf path. These receivers also sampled continuously over the 20 to 4500Hz range for six weeks. All source/receivers were outfitted with environmental sensors. Figure below shows an example of the acoustic signal recorded by SHRU #3
To describe the temperature (sound velocity) and density structure of the slope and shelf regions of the SW06 site, and to observe the internal wave activity, an array of physical oceanographic moorings was designed and deployed. The array consisted of an across-shelf and along-shelf line of environmental moorings which intersected in a “T”. At the intersection there was a cluster of 16 moorings forming a tight 3D array. All environmental moorings had a highflyer marker with a temperature sensor at about 1 m depth to observe the surface temperature field. During the SW06 experiment, packets of nonlinear internal waves (100-400 m wavelength, 0.70.8 m/s speed) were likely present on the acoustic transmission path, changing the behavious of the water column.
