Date of Award

12-2023

Degree Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

School

Ocean Science and Engineering

Committee Chair

Anand Hiroji

Committee Chair School

Ocean Science and Engineering

Committee Member 2

Leonardo Macelloni

Committee Member 2 School

Ocean Science and Engineering

Committee Member 3

Davin Wallace

Committee Member 3 School

Ocean Science and Engineering

Abstract

Although Multibeam Echosounders (MBES) backscatter products like Angular Response Curves (ARC) and mosaics have been used and applied to different sediment types as classification tools, little is known about the extraction and interpretation of ARCs using Phase Differencing Bathymetric Sonar Systems (PDBS). This thesis aims to use an across-track approach to develop a method for extracting ARCs from georeferenced bathymetric data using PDBS.

Three different data collection surveys were conducted using a PDBS operating at 540kHz. Using only the bathymetric data, initial ARCs from 3 different intensity classes (high, medium, and low) were successfully extracted, the results of which attempted to quantify temporal changes in the ARCs and correlate them with changes in the seafloor of six different sites.

The main results provide a summary of algorithm developments undertaken toidentify and improve backscatter extraction using PDBS within three acoustically diverse sites. The results of this research show very subtle changes in ARCs between different sites which do not have a substantial enough intensity difference to infer that the seafloor changed from one survey date to the other. Even without all corrections applied; the results of this extraction process are encouraging as it shows with more work, PDBS ARCs can be used in similar ways as MBES ARCs for classification purposes.

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