Your browser is no longer supported. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience.

Sound Speed in Water

The speed of sound in water is a fundamental parameter of any system that uses the time of flight of an acoustic signal to calculate range – this includes all technology that uses the well-known principles of SONAR (Sound Navigation and Ranging) such as single-beam and multi-beam echosounders (SBES and MBES), and underwater positioning techniques such as ultra-short or long baseline (USBL or LBL). The efficient detection and location of submarines also requires knowledge of the speed of sound. Valeport offer sensors that provide data to derive the speed of sound from temperature, salinity/conductivity and depth (known as CTD measurements), but also provide systems that measure the speed of sound directly.