Scattering in an anisotropic random medium: Numerical calculations

The formulation of scattering of low‐frequency acoustic radiation in an anisotropic random medium, like the ocean, results in an integro‐differential equation for the coherence function. It was argued, however, that for horizontal scattering a more simplified differential equation is adequate. In this paper we demonstrate, by direct numerical calculation, that for a realistic case, this simplification is indeed appropriate and that the errors introduced are only of the order of a few percent. For vertical scattering in the absence of refraction, it is pointed out that a quasiasymptotic angular distribution results for large propagation distances in contrast to the exact asymptotic state that is predicted by the differential equation.