An experimental test of a model for scattered envelope statistics

Co‐located acoustic and high‐resolution environmental data were collected at Seneca Lake in the summers of 2005 and 2006. The first acoustic data set was acquired in August of 2005 near Dresden, New York, over an approximately 5 square km section of Seneca Lake near the Naval Undersea Warfare Center’s System Measurement Platform and consisted of large numbers of high bandwidth high‐frequency pings (tens of kHz). Analysis of the acoustic data showed areas of distinctly nonRayleigh statistics. In mid‐July, 2006, high‐resolution environmental ground truth data were collected including bathymetry and scattering strength data obtained using a RESON 8101 SeaBat 240 kHz calibrated multibeam system, video from ROV, and sediment grab samples. The ground truth data showed the dominant scattering mechanism to be large numbers of Quagga mussels. The spatial distribution of the mussels can be used to predict the broadband statistics using a recently developed model [D. A. Abraham and A. P. Lyons, IEEE J. Ocean. Eng., 27, 800–813, (2002)], providing an excellent opportunity to test the model. Results and model/data comparisons are presented in this paper. [Work performed under ONR Grant Nos. N00014‐04‐1‐0013 and N00014‐06‐1‐0245.]