Abstract

An approach to determining the operating range of an echo sounder in a small-sized anechoic hydroacoustic water tank is proposed. The approach is based on an experimental design that suppresses the reflections of the echo sounder’s radiated pulse and irradiate the echo sounder antenna with a pulse simulating the pulse reflected from an object during use in a natural condition. The echo sounder’s sound pulse is received by a reversible hydrophone and reradiated with a reduced amplitude and a delayed onset of radiation. The feasibility of this approach is confirmed by a calculated estimate: by the time the pulse is radiated by the reversible hydrophone, the influence of reflections of the echo sounder’s pulse from the water tank walls on hydrophone pulse becomes negligible. The advantages of the proposed approach compared to the one used in practice are: the labor intensity of the experiment is reduced, the risks of perceiving reverberation interference as a useful pulse or missing a useful pulse due to its masking by interference are eliminated, high accuracy in determining the range of the echo sounder is ensured, and the risk of unjustified rejection is reduced.

Keywords

echo sounder, range, small-sized water tank, reversible hydrophone, sound reflection