Degradation of SNR Imposed by Bubble Curtains in Underwater Acoustic Channel

Abstract

Marine carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been identified as an important strategy to mitigate greenhouse gas emission. To operate underwater gas injection and monitoring undersea facilities, wireless acoustic transmission is often applied. However, such operation may be influenced by gaseous bubble emission from the seabed. In this work, we conduct experiments in anechoic tank based laboratory to quantity the degradation of Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) imposed by bubble curtains in underwater acoustic channel. Signals at five single frequencies from 5 to 65 kHz have been used to ensonify bubbles in the channel. The results show that the SNR of acoustic transmission degrades up to 18 dB as the gas flow rate increases from 1 to 16 L/min.