The mutual scattering cross section.

A generalization of the conventional interface scattering cross section is introduced. This new object will be called the mutual scattering cross section, and, like the conventional cross section, can be used in narrow-band sonar applications. It can treat both sea-surface and seafloor scattering and is useful in cases where large arrays are employed as well as in multipath environments. The application to large arrays with uniform half-space water column and seafloor is examined briefly, but the bulk of this article is devoted to multipathing in the ocean waveguide. Comparisons with more accurate, but more numerically intensive, approaches in range-independent environments show that the mutual cross section can provide an efficient solution for the reverberation intensity time series. The mutual cross section incorporates interference effects causing oscillations in the reverberation time series. Such oscillations have been reported in the literature, but previous modeling efforts have been ad hoc, not based on scattering physics. The mutual cross section is shown to model backscattering enhancement due to multipathing, another phenomenon not seen in simpler models. Expressions for the mutual cross section are derived for seafloor roughness scattering and sediment volume scattering.