NOAA knows best with multibeam order

20 Apr 2010
New multibeam sonar systems are being mounted on the hydrographic survey launches of ‘SV Rainier’ and other NOAA ships.

New multibeam sonar systems are being mounted on the hydrographic survey launches of ‘SV Rainier’ and other NOAA ships.

The National Ocean Service (NOS) of America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has awarded Reson a contract for the delivery of seven Reson SeaBat multibeam sonar systems for hydrographic and research applications

NOAA is a federal agency within the United States Department of Commerce focused on the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere. Its fleet ranges from oceanographic research ships capable of exploring the world's deepest oceans to smaller ships and launches responsible for charting the nation's coastal waters. The fleet supports a wide range of marine activities, including fisheries and coastal research, nautical charting, and long range ocean and climate studies.

NOAA's ships are specially equipped and designed to support the agency's programs and have capabilities not found in the commercial fleet. Six of the SeaBat sonar systems are to be mounted on the hydrographic survey launches of the SV Rainier, SV Fairweather, SV Thomas Jefferson and SV Ferdinand R. Hassler,  while the seventh system will be mounted on the SV Nancy Foster. These sonar systems will be used primarily to continue the legacy of NOAA’s 200 year mission of coastal and international charting.

SeaBat 7125-SV offers a number of new and unique features. The new transceiver provides an integrated multiport serial card and is optionally available with PDS2000 pre-installed for data acquisition and display as well as data processing on the same hardware platform. Four video outputs allow multiple survey and helm displays to be run. Roll stabilization and variable swath coverage of up to 140° featuring 200kHz/400kHz frequencies offers the preferred combination of swath and resolution.

A real-time uncertainty output from the SeaBat 7125 may be used in PDS2000, along with information from other sensors to calculate a TPE (Total Propagated Error). Soundings may be filtered by setting either the relevant IHO order or by defining a custom vertical error limit. Other new features in SeaBat 7125-SV include roll stabilization, XYZ offsets for flexible transducer installations, quality filter and advanced diagnostic which increase survey efficiency. AutoPilot uses sonar tuning values from a default or user generated look-up table for hands free sonar operation.

Images for this article - click to enlarge

New multibeam sonar systems are being mounted on the hydrographic survey launches of ‘SV Rainier’ and other NOAA ships.

Unless otherwise stated, all images copyright © Mercator Media 2010. This does not exclude the owner's assertion of copyright over the material.


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