Cassandra: An integrated, scalable, SAS based system for acoustic imaging and bathymetry

By combining a wide range of systems and technologies, Kongsberg has recently produced a complete, integrated turnkey solution for very high resolution wide-swath real-time acoustic imaging and bathymetry. Named Cassandra, the system is suitable for platforms such as towed systems, large ROVs and other submersibles. Core components include modular sonar receiver arrays; a high-resolution multibeam echo sounder as a gap filler; an aided inertial navigation system; a real-time synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) processing engine for imagery and bathymetry; as well as an integrated control and visualization system. Full-swath high-resolution real-time SAS bathymetry has been developed as part of the project. The method is based on cross-correlation of motion-compensated wavenumber-domain SAS imagery from two vertically separated receiver arrays.