Development of a shipboard acoustic Doppler current profiler

Abstract

A shipboard long range acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) was developed that can measure vertical profiles of ocean currents and acoustic backscattering strength in 32 layers up to a depth of 400 m and track the sea bottom up to a depth of 1000 m. The profiler incorporates a 70-kHz, phased-array acoustic transducer module, and an advanced signal processing method based on the autocorrelation function is used to derive the mean Doppler shift frequency from the received acoustic signal. To confirm the performance of the ADCP, the transducer and transmitter-receiver unit were tested in the open sea. Comparison between the ADCP and Aanderaa current meters (RCM) was also carried out. Results showed that the system can measure the ocean current velocity and the scattering strength up to a depth of 400 m.<>