Abstract
Histograms of echo peaks from three different topographic regions in the outer beams of a Sea Beam sonar show distinct variation as the topography changes from the North Cleft ridge to the Cascadia abyssal plain in the Pacific Ocean. Parameter estimation of probability density functions (pdfs) shows significant departure from Rayleigh pdf for the nonabyssal plain sites. The spectral character of the sea-floor roughness from an acoustic backscatter model suggests that the ridge area is dominated by large-scale roughness and the abyssal plain by small scale. It appears that change in roughness magnitude effects the observed histogram characteristics.
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Talukdar, K.K., Tyce, R.C. Relation of sea beam echo peak statistics to the character of bottom topography. Geo-Marine Letters 12, 200–207 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02091839
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02091839