Multibeam Users Look to Future
NATO’s quest for the ultimate shallow water sonar was the subject of one of a series of forward-looking papers presented at a recent international multibeam user workshop held at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar & Marine Research, Bremerhaven in association with Atlas Hydrographic. Speaking at the two-day event attended by more than sixty leading sonar specialists, Dr Robert Tyce, Head of the Oceanographic Department of NATO SACLANT’s Undersea Research Centre at La Spezia, anticipated mounting of sonar on unmanned vehicles (AUVs) for high quality hydrographic surveys, seafloor classification and mine detection operations. Other topics reviewed by speakers from Denmark, Germany, the UK and US ranged from improved quality of acoustic sensors and adoption of ECDIS for military use to narrow-beam parametric sub-bottom profilers, quieter sonar, latest methods for data processing and interpretation, and backscatter, sidescan and seafloor classification.