World Ocean Simulation System

WOSS is a multi-threaded C++ framework that permits the integration of any existing underwater channel simulator that expects environmental data as input and provides as output a channel realization.
Currently, WOSS integrates the Bellhop ray-tracing program or any of its equivalent forks.
Thanks to WOSS automation the user only has to specify the location in the world and the time where the simulation should take place. This is done by setting the simulated date and the wanted latitude and longitude of every node involved. The simulator automatically handles the rest (check technical description).
WOSS can be integrated in any network simulator or simulation tool that supports C++.

Check the third-party libraries section for the latest library and database requirements and compatibilies.

Latest releases

Latest WOSS released: v2.0.1 (January 2026)

Latest WOSS-NS3 released: v2.0.1 (January 2026)

Latest Dbs released: v1.7.1 (April 2025)

Latest news

WOSS 2.0.1 introduces support for configuring bellhop‘s executable name, thus enabling support for bellhopcxx , bellhopcuda programs.

WOSS 2.0.0 introduces a complete library refactor to modern C++17 syntax, which support is now mandatory.
For the complete list of changes, see the CHANGELOG webpage.
It is strongly recommended to reset any forked repository to origin’s HEAD due to a required repository history rewrite.

WOSS 1.14.0 has added support for bellhop’s bathymetry geoacoustic matrix

WOA 2023 dataset has been added to Dbs v1.7.0

Acknowledgements

WOSS version 2.x has been developed by Federico Guerra

WOSS version 1.x has been developed by Federico Guerra and SIGNET lab, University of Padova, in collaboration with the NATO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (http://www.cmre.nato.int ; E-mail: pao@cmre.nato.int), whose support is gratefully acknowledged.

The development of:
– the option to simulate the time evolution of environmental parameters
– the option to model surface waves using realistic wave spectra
has been supported in part by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme, CLAM project (Grant Agreement no. 258359).

License

WOSS – World Ocean Simulation System –
Copyright (C) 2009 2025 – Federico Guerra and regents of the SIGNET lab, University of Padua

Author: Federico Guerra – WOSS@guerra-tlc.com

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Author

Federico Guerra

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