Postprocessing and signal corrections for multibeam echosounder images

Abstract

Multibeam echosounders own the attractive ability to simultaneously provide a bathymetric map and a sonar image of an insonified area. Nevertheless, their increasing resolution and data rate underline classical approximations used by the manufacturers in the real time algorithms. This leads to artefacts in sonar images and to difficulties in geological interpretations. In this paper, on the one hand, echo simulations characterise the artefact importance according to the sounder geometrical configuration (water depth, pulse time duration, ...). On the other hand, the authors propose a post-processing correction method together with its validity limits.