Statistical characterization of multibeam echosounder data

The statistical studies of high resolution sonar images recorded by a 95 kHz multibeam echosounder prove that the Rayleigh law is no more adapted to the description of the textured sonar images. Seafloor reverberation statistical models have been put forward to interpret those high resolution particularities and to propose the correlated K-law distributions. Moreover, the author takes advantage of the multibeam echosounder geometry to highlight a change of the sonar image statistics with the insonified area and with the transmission angle. A rigorous interpretation of the image spectral and statistical properties must account for the acquisition process geometry.