Sound scattering experiment of thermocline in shallow sea

This article presents the result of sound scattering experiments of thermocline, which were done at three stations in Southern Yellow Sea of China. The center frequencies of sources used in these experiments are 120 kHz, 160 kHz and 200 kHz respectively. During the process of experiments, the CTD was used to record the temperature and salinity of different depth, while plankton were sampling layerly.
According to R. KIND's method, we calculate the reflection coefficient spetrum of nonuniform layered system to get the scattering signals by digital simulation for comparition with those from the experiments.
The results of experiments showed that the reaching time of seatering signals matched the time obtained by digital simulation. On ther other hand, the relation between the density distribution of the plankton around the thermocline and the reaching time of the scattering signals was not definite enough. So it can be concluded that the major mechanism of sound scattering is due to the nonuniformity of tempaerature in the sea.