Comparison of different short-range sonar systems on real structures and objects

In recent years, the ultrasound division of the Fraunhofer IBMT has developed and manufactured several imaging sonar systems for different visualization purposes. For short-range high-resolution imaging, three different concepts of sonar systems have been developed and transferred into demonstrators. The first one is a 128 element multibeam echosounder with a combined transmitting and receiving aperture. The second system is a volumetric imaging sonar based on a Mills Cross antenna configuration and the third system is a real-time capable, high-resolution 3D sonar camera with a matrix antenna consisting of 32 × 32 single transducer elements. After validating these systems on various phantoms in measurement tanks, more advanced measurements on real structures and objects were performed in order to evaluate and compare the imaging capabilities of the different sonar systems. In this work we present the results of these measurements together with an analysis of the specific advantages and disadvantages of the short-range imaging systems for different visualization tasks.