Design and Experiments of a Portable Seabed Integrated Detection Sonar

The integrated observation of seabed topography, sediment geomorphology and sub-bottom profile information is very important for seabed remote sensing and mapping. To improve the efficiency of seabed detection and meet the needs of portable development of detection equipment, we developed a portable seabed feature integrated detection sonar (PSIDS) with whcih a single sonar device can simultaneously detect the above three types of seabed information. The underwater transducer is mainly composed of the following three components: a parametric emission array as the sound source, a high frequency receiving linear array for multibeam echo signal collection, and a two-dimensional vector hydrophone for receiving the low-frequency sediment echo signal. Field experiments were conducted to validate the performance of the PSIDS on 11–17 January 2018 in Jiaozhou Bay, China. (1) PSIDS could perform the functions of both multibeam sonar and sub-bottom profiler; (2) The synchronously and integrated measurement of various seabed information was achieved by alternately emitting multibeam echo-sounding and sub-bottom profiling signal using parametric source. The detection results proved the feasibility and practicability of PSIDS to achieve multiple seafloor characteristics. PSIDS provides a new idea for developing integrated seabed detection sonar. In terms of convenience and data fusion, it is a good option to use this equipment for integrated seabed detection.