A consistent, user friendly interface for running a variety of underwater acoustic propagation codes

Abstract

A number of underwater acoustic propagation modelling programs have been placed in the public domain by their authors. Different programs are required for different situations, but together they can perform the majority of common modelling tasks. All these programs are input file driven, but with different file formats, and each requires considerable time and effort to be expended in order to work out its specific requirements. The programs also generate output data in a number of different formats, making the setting up of software for visualisation or further processing a time consuming process. Several years ago the Centre for Marine Science and Technology publicly released a free Graphical User Interface (GUI) that provides a simple, consistent interface for running the various propagation routines in the Acoustic Toolbox, a collection of underwater acoustic propagation modelling programs written by Mike Porter from HLS Research. The GUI is written in Matlab, and also provides a variety of output data visualisation tools. It provides ready access to programs for acoustic field calculation by normal modes, wavenumber integration, and ray and beam tracing, and can also compute reflection coefficients for complicated layered seabeds. These codes are only suitable for modelling range-independent environments, with the exception of the ray code which can handle range-dependent bathymetry. An expanded version of this interface has recently been released and can be downloaded for free from CMST's web site. The primary enhancement is to provide fully range-dependent modelling through the inclusion of support for the RAM family of parabolic equation codes written by Mike Collins at the US Naval Research Laboratory. This paper describes the capabibilities of this new version of the GUI, and provides examples of its use.