A broadband ADCP scattering echo model

Acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) is designed to measure the velocity profile within the water column, whilst the ability of ADCP to measure the suspended sediment concentration has been investigated for a long time. The key of the measurement is to analyze multi-frequency backscattering intensity, and to extract suspended sediment information using acoustic inversion algorithms. To investigate multi-frequency backscattering intensity from aqueous layers, a broadband ADCP scattering echo model is presented. First we analyze the detailed sound propagation under the ADCP measurement scenario, in terms of transmission loss, volume scattering strength etc. Then the broadband scattering is characterized as a filtering process in the frequency domain, and the Fourier synthesis technology is used to reconstruct the scattering echo signal. The model results have been compared with field measurement data, showing a good performance in estimating backscattering intensity and a good correspondence between the measured and modeled scattering echo signals statistically.