Calculating the Allowable Co-ordinates of Acoustic Transducers to Avoid Multipath Interference in a Tank

In many underwater acoustic experiments in a non-anechoic water tank, multipath interference is a serious problem. If the transmitted acoustic pulses are too long in relation to the tank's dimensions, the interference can render the measurements meaningless. In this paper, an algorithm is developed which, for a given pulse length, may be applied to calculate the allowable volume in which a projector-hydrophone pair may be placed without being affected by multipath interference. This is particularly useful if either the projector or the hydrophone, or both, have to be moved frequently through many points in a three-dimensional grid during the course of an experiment.