It's an MIT press release. Technique probably doesn't work at any interesting distance, but this way they can make it sound as if they've discovered something incredible without ever having to acknowledge that they know it won't work as described.
It seemed pretty clear that they did a prototype scale test and then the rest was computer modeling. I'm actually shocked they calibrated it to within 1dB of reality and am curious how they managed to prove that one.
I agree about academic press releases generally, but it seems to work as described? If their model is right and they build a larger prototype, which is normal scaleup from academia, a kilometer scale underwater RFID tagged sensor buoys responding to a transmitter seems like a reasonable if optimistic claim. They can't build that before modeling, and they can't model without a small scale system to cross-calibrate with.
This press release actually seems better than most to be honest...
