Physical modeling and statistical characterization of shallow-water seabed reverberation based on Gaussian beam tracing

Shallow-water seabed reverberation presents a critical disturbance in acoustic propagation, affecting the target detection performance of monostatic sonar. This paper proposes a novel seabed reverberation model integrating Gaussian beam tracing with seabed scattering physics. The model synthesizes time-domain reverberation signals by superimposing scattering signals received across multiple propagation paths. It accurately resolves scattering signals along distinct paths and enables simulation of reverberation under diverse shallow-water environments by adjusting the marine parameters. Furthermore, we model the seabed reverberation signals in the time domain and the space domain for a cylindrical transceiver array, and provide a detailed statistical characterization of the simulated seabed reverberation signals. Finally, shallow-water seabed reverberation experiments were conducted with a cylindrical transceiver array. Comparisons between shallow-water seabed reverberation measurements and simulation estimates at various sites and transceiver depths demonstrate that the proposed seabed reverberation model can efficiently simulate shallow-water seabed reverberation.