Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / In this thesis, the ocean was modeled as a waveguide with an ideal pressure - release surface, and an ideal rigid bottom. The ocean waveguide was then treated as a linear, time - invariant, space - variant (TISV) filter or communication channel. The filter is time - invariant because no motion was modeled and because the properties of the ocean were assumed to be constant. The filter is space - variant because of the presence of the two boundaries, that is, the ocean surface and ocean bottom. This thesis investigates the ocean as a linear TISV filter by evaluating 1) the complex frequency response, 2) the impulse response, and 3) the transfer function of the ocean with respect to depth. It is shown that the TISV impulse response of the ocean contains information that can be used to help localize a target in range and whether the target is above or below the receiver. Computer simulation results were obtained by evaluating the three filter functions for several different test cases. / Ensign, United States Navy