6.1 Introduction Definition of transmission loss The sea, together with its boundaries, forms a remarkably complex medium for the propagation of sound. It possesses an internal structure and a peculiar upper and lower surface which create many diverse effects upon the sound emitted from an underwater projector. In traveling through the sea, ar. underwater sound signal becomes delayed, distorted, and weakened. Transmission loss expresses the magnitude of one of the many phenom- ena associated with sound propagation in the sea. The sonar parameter transmission loss quantitatively describes the weakening of sound between a point 1 yd from the source and a point at a distance in the sea. More specifically, if Jo is the intensity at the reference point located 1 yd from the “acoustic center” of the source (10 log Jp is the source level of the source) and I; is the intensity at a distant point, then the transmission loss between the source and the distant point is TL= 10 log #2 dB 1 Since Jo and J; are intensities, a time average is implied in the definition. For a CW or quasi-CW source, this time average is taken over a long enough interval of time to include all the effects of fluctuation in transmis- sion; for a short transient pulse, the averaging time must be long enough to include the multipath trans- mission effects that cause distortion of the received propagation of sound in the sea: transmission loss, I