Remote sensing of the seafloor constitutes an important topic in exploration, management, protection and other investigations of the marine environment. In the paper, a combined approach to seafloor characterisation is presented. It relies on calculation of several descriptors related to seabed type using three different types of multibeam sonar data obtained during seafloor sensing, viz.: 1) the grey-level sonar images (echograms)...

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Despite many years of the development of methodology for sensing the seafloor by means of underwater acoustics, the currently used techniques are still not mature enough and not ready to be utilised in numerous different (i.e. with respect to a water region character, used equipment type etc.) tasks. Therefore the hydroacoustic methods, both utilising vertical observations (e.g. by singlebeam echosounders), as well as those relying...

The combined approach to seafloor characterisation was investigated. It relies on calculation of several descriptors (parameters) related to seabed type using three types of multibeam sonar data obtained during seafloor sensing: 1) the grey-level sonar images (echograms) of seabed, 2) the 3D model of the seabed surface which consists of bathymetric data, 3) the set of time domain bottom echo envelopes received in the consecutive...

The method of seabed identification and classification from multibeam sonar echoes is presented. The proposed approach is based on calculation of a set of parameters of an echo envelope, similarly as in seafloor classification using single beam echosounder. These parameters are extracted for each consecutive beam allowing the estimation of their dependence on the seafloor incident angle. The relation between seabed type and calculated...