The MB-System Cookbook
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The MB-System
 Cookbook

Val Schmidt

LDEO
Research Engineer
 Columbia University
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

Dale Chayes

LDEO
Senior Staff Associate/Research Engineer
 Columbia University
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

Dave Caress

MBARI
Senior Research Specialist
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Monterey Bay Research Institute

Table of Contents

Version
1. Introduction
1.1. What Is This Document About?
1.2. How Do I Get The Most Current Version?
1.3. What is MB-System
1.4. What Kind of Data Sets Can MB-System be Used On?
1.5. Important Notes Regarding the Data Used in the MB-System Cookbook
2. Multibeam Sonar Basics
2.1. How Sound Travels Through Water
2.1.1. Speed of Sound
2.1.2. The Effects of Sound Speed Errors
2.1.3. Spreading Loss
2.1.4. Absorption
2.1.5. Reverberation
2.2. How Sound Interacts with the Sea Floor
2.3. Acoustic Interference
2.3.1. Radiated Noise or Self Noise
2.3.2. Flow Noise
2.3.3. Bubble Sweep Down
2.3.4. Cross Talk
2.4. Signal to Noise Ratio
2.5. Swath Mapping Sonar Systems
2.5.1. Multibeam Echo Sounders MBES
2.5.2. Sidescan Swath Bathymetric Sonars SSBS
3. Surveying Your Survey with MB-System
3.1. Managing Your Data With mbdatalist
3.2. Plotting Data
3.3. Extracting Statistics
4. Processing Multibeam Data with MB-System
4.1. Overview
4.1.1. Many Types of Sonar
4.1.2. Strategy
4.2. Identifying the MB-System Data Format
4.3. Format Conversion
4.3.1. Background
4.3.2. SeaBeam 2100
4.3.3. Converting Your Data
4.4. Survey and Organize the Data
4.4.1. Integrating Your Data into a Larger Set
4.4.2. Organize The Data Set Internally
4.4.3. Ancillary Files
4.4.4. Surveying your Survey - Revisited
4.5. Determine Roll and Pitch Bias
4.5.1. Roll Bias
4.5.2. Pitch Bias
4.6. Determine Correct SSP's
4.6.1. Variations in Sound Speed and Your Data
4.7. Smooth The Navigation Data
4.7.1. MBnavedit
4.8. Flag Erroneous Bathymetry Data
4.8.1. Automated Flagging of Bathymetry
4.8.2. Interactive Flagging of Bathymetry
4.9. Determine Amplitude and Grazing Angle Functions for Side Scan
4.10. The Final Step: Reprocessing the Bathymetry and Sidescan
4.10.1. Mbset
4.10.2. The Parameter File
4.10.3. Mbprocess
5. Advanced Sonar Data Statistics
5.1. Advanced Statistics with mbinfo
5.2. Advanced Statistics with mblist
5.3. Advanced Statistics with mbgrid
A. Acknowledgments
B. MB-System Command Reference
C. Installing MB-System
C.1. Overview
C.2. Downloading MB-System
C.3. Installing GMT and netCDF
C.4. Creating a Directory Structure for MB-System
C.5. Editing "install_makefiles"
C.6. Run install_makefiles and Compile MB-System
D. Other Useful Tools
E. References
E.1. Acoustic References
E.2. Sonar References
F. History of MB-System
G. Shipboard Multi-Beam Sonar Installations

List of Figures

2.1. Typical SSP
2.2. Diagram of Planar Soundwaves Orthogonally Incident on a Linear Hydrophone Array.
2.3. Diagram of Beam Forming Performed by A Linear Array
2.4. Snell's Law
3.1. Survey Navigation Plot
3.2. Color Bathymetry Plot
3.3. Color Bathymetry Plot with Contours
3.4. High Intensity Color Bathymetry Plot with Contours
3.5. Shaded Relief Color Bathymetry Plot
3.6. Sidescan Plot
4.1. Lo'ihi Archive Data Structure
4.2. Lo'ihi Survey Navigation Data
4.3. Lo'ihi Survey Navigation Plot
4.4. Lo'ihi Survey Contour Plot
4.5. Plot of First Data Leg for Roll Bias Calculation
4.6. Plot of Second Data Leg for Roll Bias Calculation
4.7. mbedit Screen Shot
4.8. Plot of compositefirsttrackp.mb183
4.9. Plot of compositesecondtrackp.mb183
4.10. MB-VelocityTool
4.11. MB-VelocityTool
4.12. MB-VelocityTool with SSP's Loaded
4.13. MB-VelocityTool with Plot Scaling Dialog
4.14. MB-VelocityTool with Sonar Data Loaded
4.15. MB-VelocityTool with Edited Profile
4.16. MBnavedit
4.17. MBnavedit
4.18. MBnavedit Time Interval and Longitude Plots
4.19. MBnavedit Latitude and Speed Plots
4.20. MBnavedit Heading and Sonar Depth Plots
4.21. MBnavedit Towed Sonar Time Difference and Longitude Plots
4.22. MBnavedit Towed Sonar Latitude and Speed Plots
4.23. MBnavedit Towed Sonar Speed Plot
4.24. MBnavedit Towed Sonar Heading and Depth Plots
4.25. MBnavedit Towed Sonar Heading and Depth Plots with "Made-Good" plots Removed
4.26. Speed and Heading Plots Zoomed
4.27. MBnavedit Heading and Sonar Depth Plots
4.28. Interpolated Points
4.29. Nav Modeling Window
4.30. Dead Reckoning Position Plots
4.31. Sumer Loihi Unedited Data
4.32. Sumer Loihi Data with Outer Beams Flagged from MBclean
4.33. Sumner Loihi Data with Outer Beams and Slope Greater than 1 Flagged from MBclean
4.34. Sumner Loihi Data with Slope Greater than 1 Flagged and the Loss of Good Data
4.35. MBedit GUI
4.36. MBedit Open Sonar Swath File Dialog Box
4.37. MBedit With Sonar Data Loaded
4.38. MBedit With Display Adjustments
4.39. MBedit Bathymetry Filters
4.40. MBedit Bathymetry
4.41. MBedit Filter by Beam Number
4.42. MBedit Filter Results
4.43. Unedited Data for Demonstration
4.44. Interactive Editing Results
5.1. Flat Bottom - STDEV vs Beam Number
5.2. Nadir Beam Depth Plot
5.3. Ping Interval vs. Bottom Depth
5.4. R/V Ewing Survey: Gridded Data
5.5. R/V Ewing Survey: Data Density Plot
5.6. R/V Ewing Survey: Gridded Standard Deviation
5.7. R/V Ewing Survey: Gridded Standard Deviation With New Color Map
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