Simulation and modeling software has been developed to generate synthetic midwater multibeam data. Essentially, the simulator can be considered as a virtual test tank. In order to develop multibeam data analysis methods for fisheries research, it is essential to have a variety of test data sets available, which are ground truthed, georeferenced and corrected for vessel motion. Since equipment and ship time are expensive and data quality not always guaranteed, the simulator provides an effective alternative. The seabed and any objects in the water column such as fish and fish schools can be defined in a 3-dimensional space. A specification for a generic linear array multibeam sonar and its position in space and time can be chosen. The acoustic model implements the technique of acoustic ray-tracing to obtain the pressure at the transducer face, which is converted to individual samples by modeling the working of a digital multibeam system. Beamforming is performed on the fly, and both raw and beamformed complex data sets are generated. Current research on model validation, calibration and analysis techniques will be presented along with an outline of planned future research.

Item Type:	Non Refereed Conference Paper
Research Division:	Information and Computing Sciences
Research Group:	Computer vision and multimedia computation
Research Field:	Pattern recognition
Objective Division:	Animal Production and Animal Primary Products
Objective Group:	Fisheries - wild caught
Objective Field:	Fisheries - wild caught not elsewhere classified
UTAS Author:	Buelens, B (Mr Bart Buelens)
UTAS Author:	Williams, RN (Dr Ray Williams)
UTAS Author:	Sale, AHJ (Professor Arthur Sale)
ID Code:	43955
Year Published:	2003
Deposited By:	Computing
Deposited On:	2007-03-30
Last Modified:	2015-09-28
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