Date of Award

Spring 2007

Project Type

Thesis

Program or Major

Electrical Engineering

Degree Name

Master of Science

First Advisor

Christian P de Moustier

Abstract

In 2001, NOAA acquired an L-3 Communications Klein 5410 bathymetric sidescan sonar system that simultaneously provided high resolution multibeam acoustic imagery and wide swath bathymetry. The sonar's inability to produce matching bathymetry in overlapping swaths motivated the detailed acoustic and signal processing analyses described in this thesis.

Results of this research include specific corrections for phase distortions introduced by the sonar's transmit pulses, receiver electronics, and transducer elements, which are implemented in a newly-developed full vector bathymetric processing algorithm to estimate accurate acoustic arrival angles for each sample of the seafloor echo acquired by the Klein 5410 sonar. Performance of this algorithm was verified during a survey conducted in New York Harbor during October of 2006. The resulting bathymetry matches bathymetry obtained independently over the same survey area with a Reson SeaBat 8125 focused multibeam echo-sounder operating at the same acoustic frequency.

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