Measurement of Scattering Properties of Water Body by Using a Multibeam Echosounder System

We propose a backscattering compensation-based procedure to enhance the performance of multibeam echosounder systems (MBESs). High resolution in a wide field of view is the main benefit of MBESs, and this property makes them increasingly important for measuring scattering in water body. The performance of these systems is vulnerable to the anisotropic characteristics of scatterers, and thus, the results provided by MBESs can be inaccurate. To enhance the performance of MBESs, we compensate for the echo data on the basis of backscattering strength. The compensation considers the reflected sound energy by introducing interlayer coefficients calculated from the amounts of energy that penetrate into and are reflected from each layer. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, we perform numerical simulations with randomly positioned scatters having anisotropic properties. Furthermore, anechoic pool experiments are conducted using bubbles generated by air compressors and propellers. The after-compensation results reveal richer details, thereby confirming the effectiveness of the proposed method.