A Wide-Area Deep Ocean Floor Mapping System: Design and Sea Tests
Name
geomatics-03-00016.pdf
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14.95 MB
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Adobe PDF
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cc8e115fdb2a445aa0497f8cdb62077d
Author(s)
Ryu, Paul
Brown, David
Arsenault, Kevin
Cho, Byunggu
March, Andrew
Ali, Wael H.
Charous, Aaron
Lermusiaux, Pierre F. J.
Date Issued
March 22, 2023
Publisher
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Citation
Geomatics 3 (1): 290-311 (2023)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Mapping the seafloor in the deep ocean is currently performed using sonar systems on surface vessels (low-resolution maps) or undersea vessels (high-resolution maps). Surface-based mapping can cover a much wider search area and is not burdened by the complex logistics required for deploying undersea vessels. However, practical size constraints for a towbody or hull-mounted sonar array result in limits in beamforming and imaging resolution. For cost-effective high-resolution mapping of the deep ocean floor from the surface, a mobile wide-aperture sparse array with subarrays distributed across multiple autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) has been designed. Such a system could enable a surface-based sensor to cover a wide area while achieving high-resolution bathymetry, with resolution cells on the order of 1 m2 at a 6 km depth. For coherent 3D imaging, such a system must dynamically track the precise relative position of each boat’s sonar subarray through ocean-induced motions, estimate water column and bottom reflection properties, and mitigate interference from the array sidelobes. Sea testing of this core sparse acoustic array technology has been conducted, and planning is underway for relative navigation testing with ASVs capable of hosting an acoustic subarray.
MIT Department
Lincoln Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Computational Science and Engineering
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3390/geomatics3010016
