Challenges in Seafloor Imaging and Mapping with Synthetic Aperture Sonar

Inhalt:
The success of synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) is critically dependent on overcoming several challenges. The sonar has to be positioned with accuracy better than a fraction of a wavelength along the synthetic aperture. The ocean environment, and particularly the sound velocity, has to be accurately estimated for successful focusing of SAS images. For nonstraight synthetic apertures, the bathymetry of the scene to be imaged must be known. Kongsberg Maritime and FFI have developed the HISAS 1030 wideband widebeam interferometric SAS. This paper describes the system and show example results from data collected by a HUGIN 1000-MR autonomous underwater vehicle.