Observed ocean acoustic wavefronts show surprising stability in long range acoustic transmission experiments. This suggests that ocean scattering processes tend to re-distribute acoustic energy dominantly along the wavefront rather than across it. The purpose of this thesis is to elucidate the physical mechanism for this type of scattering by presenting a ray based physical model. Analytic formulae are presented that predict wavefront distortions caused by ocean internal waves and other processes. Applications of this study include wavefront healing near underwater obstacles, out of plane scattering and the vertical redistribution of energy of off axis sources.
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