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Systematic measurements were performed to characterize shallow-water acoustic propagation channels for applications in the field of underwater communications. The survey was conducted in northern Europe and covers the continental shelf, Norwegian fjords, a sheltered bay, a channel, and the Baltic Sea. The measurements were performed in various frequency bands between 2 and 32 kHz. The outcome of the study is a variety of channels that differ in many ways, defying any attempt to define a typical acoustic communication channel. Miscellaneous forward propagation effects are presented, which are relevant to channel models for the design of modulation schemes, network protocols, and simulation environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the 4.6 million Baltic Sea Information on the Acoustic Soundscape (BIAS) project by a consortium of researchers from six Baltic countries on putting a baseline of the changing soundscape throughout 2013. According to senior advisor at the Finnish Environment Institute, Jukka Pajala, the project aims to determine what constitutes a healthy underwater soundscape so that human-introduced noise can be controlled. It examines how sound influence spawning and migration.