The impact of shallow waveguides on the spectral characteristics of modulated spectral lines in underwater radiated noise produced by ships

Abstract

Abstract The modulation spectrum line spectrum of undersea radiated noise from ships is a significant characteristic in the identification of ship targets. This research presents an analysis of the impact of waveguide dispersion effect and demodulation bandwidth on the intensity of modulation line spectrum, based on the theoretical framework of square demodulation method. The physical mechanism underlying this influence is derived and discussed. The examination of collected data and numerical simulations demonstrates that the extracted modulated line spectrum intensity in an unobstructed environment effectively utilizes the carrier’s energy and generally does not exhibit any abnormal loss during propagation. However, in a shallow sea dispersive waveguide, as the propagation distance increases, a transimission loss anomaly of over 3dB occurs in the modulated line spectrum. The theoretical derivation yields implications that can offer theoretical backing for the reduction of vibration and noise in underwater targets, extraction of faint signals from high-order line spectra in the distant field, and identification of targets.