Approach to the Real-Time Adaptive Control of Multiple High-Frequency Sonar Survey Systems for Unmanned Underwater Vehicles

This paper presents an approach to the real-time adaptive control of multiple high-frequency sonar for Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs). The central acoustic sensor controller manages the sensors during survey missions, facilitating the operation of co-located, similar-frequency sonar. Multibeam data is processed in real-time to provide a priori bathymetry data to auxiliary acoustic sensors. The automated system is based on the interleaving of the sonar transmission-reception cycles to avoid the saturation of acoustic harmonics, permitting the integration of multiple acoustic sensors operating in parallel. By dynamically adapting the ping rates of the payload sensors, the system optimises the execution of the seabed mapping survey and improves the quality of the resulting data, thereby significantly increasing survey productivity.