This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination. IEEE JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING 1 The Effects of Surface Gravity Waves on High-Frequency Acoustic Propagat

Abstract—A realistic 2-D time-evolving ocean surface model has been combined with an existing acoustic ray-based model to sim-ulate the effects of sea surface roughness on acoustic wave propa-gation in coastal regions. Rough sea surface realizations are gen-erated and used as sea surface boundaries in the acoustic model. An approach to achieve high resolution and accurate results while maintaining computational efficiency of a ray-based model is ap-plied. The results are then compared against a unique set of ex-perimental data collected in 15-m water depth in Delaware Bay. These data include simultaneous environment and acoustic propa-gation (1–18 kHz) measurements. Modeled arrival time-angle fluc-tuations compare well with data and suggest that there are physical processes which need to be included to improve the model, such as bubbles and turbulence as well as 3-D scattering effects. Index Terms—Acoustic propagation, acoustic scattering, sea sur-face waves, shallow water. I