Echo sounding
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Echo sounding measures water depth by transmitting a pulse of sound towards the seabed and timing the returning echo. The distance is calculated from the sound's travel time and its speed through water.
Because the pulse travels down and back, depth is approximately half the product of sound speed and elapsed time. Accurate results require corrections for temperature, salinity, pressure, vessel motion, and instrument position.
Single-beam systems measure directly beneath a vessel, while multibeam echo sounders transmit and receive across a wide swath. More advanced systems can map seabed shape, sediment layers, fish, and other underwater targets.
Echo sounding is widely used in hydrographic surveying, navigation, fisheries, oceanography, engineering, and geological research. It developed from early twentieth-century sonar methods and replaced many slower manual depth-measurement techniques.
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- Source / publisher: Wikipedia
- URL type: WWW
- Credits: Wikipedia
- URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_sounding