Assigment A : Hidro - acoustic

Dzulkhi Yudha P.
Faculty of Earth Sciences and Technology, Institute of Technology, Bandung, Indonesia
dzulkhiyudha@student.itb.ac.id
One of purpose hydroacoustic is to accurately determine range underwater, that has been formulated as 0.5ct. With c is
sound speed (m/s) and t is time elapsed (s). Sound speed is distance traveled by the sound in a certain amount of time.
Speed of sound underwater very dependent on water (as medium) properties (salinity, temperature, and pressure). Higher
value of each water properties make sound speed faster.
Sound speed can be determined with a formula, dependent on known parameter. . First equation :
dan

second equation :

whereas

and

for water
third

equation :
whereas
and
and another equation is Mackanzies formula. In fact,
value of sound speed will be heterogenous due to water properties in each coloumn. To get averaged value of it, we can do
harmonic mean, and calibrated it with Sound Velocity Profiler (SVP), Conductivity Temperature Depth (CTD), and for
sallow depth use Barcheck.

Figure 1. Timeseries plot of a signal

SONAR of Sound Navigation and Ranging, is system hydro acoustic. Consist of active and passive SONAR system.
Active system means system that able to make acoustic wave and also receive it, but in passive system just able to receive
it. Active system can do this because system equipped by Transducer. Transducer is a device that can convert electric
energy to vibration and vibration to electric energy. This the equation of SONAR active:
(1)
To measure depth, transducer will send beam to the seabed in beginning of this process. How strength of that initial beam
indicated by Source Level (SL). When beam transmitted to seabed, it will disturbed by amount of noise (NL) from
environment and reverberation (RL) from its system, so beam energy get weaker. This called Transmission Loss (TL).
Target that shooted by the beam has the strength, this called TS (Target Strength). Directivity Index (DI) is focus of the
power and Detection Threshold (DT) is the dependent parameter wich established to the lowest level.
Transducer used in hydrography are designed to produced beams of acoustic power of various shape. Which is quality of
depth measurement determined by shape of that beam. If its too wide, measurement will get much noise and poor
resolution (bad quality measurement). Resolution is the ability to separate returns from two objects close together. Another
aspect that influence the measurement is pulse length. If pulse length longer, range will be longer, but resolution get lower,
and vice versa. Pulse length its self influenced by frequency. If frequency get higher, pulse length will get shorter. Its
mean the resolution of measurement get better. But, beam with high frequency can not reach longer range, because beams
energy with that terms is too easy absorbed by environment particles.
If may I conclude, quality of depth measurement by sounding dependent on:
1. Accuracy, it is necessary to calculate the error budget based on echo sounder its self.
2. Resolution of depth measurement, that dependent on pulse length and beam width.
References:
Anonymous. (2008). Fundamentals of Underwater Sound. International Association of Oil and Gas Producers and
International Association of Geophysical Contractors, London, pp 1-18.