SIS Start Up and Run-Time
Configuration
Multibeam Advisory Committee
July 14, 2012
SIS 3.8.3
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Overview
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Start up, New survey
Verify installation parameters
Set default run-time configuration
Additional settings
Saving your settings
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Start up, New survey
• Start the sounder deck box (TRU), the
workstation (HWS) and software (SIS)
• Create a new survey project
• Verify that all sensor data streams are being
received
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Start up
Start SIS. If the sounder deck unit has just
been powered up, you may have to wait a
few minutes before you can connect to the
sounder. You can periodically click the
“Rescan” button to attempt to establish
communications with the TRU.
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Start up
Once the deck unit (TRU) is responsive,
you can select the sounder from this drop
down list.
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Start up
Create a new survey project through the
following menus: View->Tear Off->New survey
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Start up
Enter the survey project name. Many institutions have naming protocols. If you have none,
the following format is recommended:
CRUISEID_INSTRUMENT_SEQUENCE_SURVEYNAME
The CRUISEID allows for easy sorting of cruises. The INSTRUMENT field helps keep data
sorted by instrument. The SEQUENCE field helps keep cruise sub-projects sorted in the order
that they were acquired. The SURVEYNAME helps keep track of the purpose of the survey.
Here are some examples:
FK003_EM710_000_PatchTest
FK003_EM710_001_TransitToArea
FK003_EM710_002_MainSurvey
FK003_EM710_003_ReturnTransit
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Start up
Choose an appropriate grid cell size.
For area surveys, choose a value that is close to the resolution
of the sounder, typically 1-2% of water depth. This enables
real-time data quality assessment since problems with the
data will show up in the grid.
If you’re collecting data while in transit, it is recommended to
choose a coarser grid cell size, otherwise it is our experience
that SIS will become unstable after a few days.
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Start up
Go back to the “Basic Parameters” tab and
click “Save new survey” then close the
“New survey” tear-off window.
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Start up
Start the sonar pinging by
clicking the “Not Pinging”
button.
Your new survey name will be
automatically loaded and will populate
the survey drop down menu.
You may wish to consider creating all
the new survey projects anticipated to
happen during a cruise in order to
ensure/enforce any naming
conventions. You can choose from any
survey from the drop down box later
when you arrive to a particular site so
there is no harm in creating the survey
project templates in advance.
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Start up
The sonar is now pinging.
Verify that all supporting
sensors are reporting.
Position
Surface sound speed
Orientation
The sonar may not necessarily
be able to track the bottom
yet. We will take care of that
later in this procedure.
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Verify Installation Parameters
• If sensors are not reporting, confirm
communication protocols in SIS
• Verify sensor linear and angular offsets
• Perform Built-In Self Test (BIST)
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Start up
Access the sensor installation parameters
through the following menus: View->Tear
Off->Installation Parameters. To access
some of the functionality, you’ll need to
stop the sonar from pinging though there
is no harm in examining the installation
parameters while the sonar is pinging.
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Start up
Verify the sensor locations against the documented
positions. If your vessel has not documented this
information, it is good practice to do so. This allows any
operator can quickly restore the system to a known good
configuration after a system crash/restore, etc. You can
verify these while the system is pinging. If you need to
change them, the system must not be pinging.
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Start up
Verify the sensor angular offsets against the documented
offsets. If your vessel has not documented this information,
it is good practice to do so. This allows any operator can
quickly restore the system to a known good configuration
after a system crash/restore, etc. You can verify these while
the system is pinging. If you need to change them, the
system must not be pinging.
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Start up
Run the system Built-In Self Tests (BIST). Some tests can be
done dockside, this allows for hardware replacement in case
of failure. Dockside noise test results should be disregarded
as these are often very pessimistic due to the noisy
environment typical of ports.
Noise tests can be done on site at survey speed to get a
better feeling for the noise levels. Having noise
measurements under these conditions allows for long-term
monitoring of the ship’s acoustic noise environment. The
same can be said of the impedance measurements.
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Start up
Save the BIST output once the tests are
complete.
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Start up
When saving the BIST output, choose the standard
directory used by SIS. This allows other operators to
quickly find these files. Follow your institution’s file
naming convention, establish one if it doesn’t exist.
A good file naming convention allows for ease of
analysis of long term trends in system performance,
for example, changes in transducer impedance or
ship noise levels.
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Set Default Run-time Configuration
• Get the sounder pinging
• Configure sounder run-time parameters
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Start up
If any of the warning lamps
are red, the sounder may
not be able to ping.
Start the sounder
pinging by clicking the
“Not Pinging” button.
To help the sonar track the bottom, access
the sonar’s run-time parameters through
the following menus: View->Tear Off>Runtime parameters.
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Start up
You can inform the sonar of the
expected depth (force depth)
and limit the depth range in
order to help it track the bottom.
Once it has found the bottom, it
is recommended make the min
depth something close to the
surface and make the max depth
much deeper than the expected
depth so as not to accidentally
filter the data.
Multibeam Advisory Committee – July 14, 2012
It is also helpful to configure an
appropriate depth mode. This
controls the pulse length, among
other things. Deeper modes use
longer pulse lengths to ensure a
strong bottom return and to
increase the likelihood of detection.
AUTO mode will eventually find an
appropriate depth mode but it may
take longer to track the bottom. If
you’re in a hurry, setting an
appropriate mode manually will
speed the process (see next page).
Once the system has found the
bottom, you should set the ping
mode back to AUTO. This will allow
the sounder to automatically adjust
the mode depending on water
depth. If the system is continually
having trouble tracking the seafloor
while surveying, you might find it
helpful to force an appropriate
depth mode.
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Recommended Depth Modes
Mode
EM710
EM302
EM122
Very Shallow
0 - 100
Not used
Not used
Shallow
100-200
0-140
0-450
Medium
200-300
140-750
450-1000
Deep
300-500
750-3300
1000-2600
Very Deep
500-1000
3300-5000
2600+
Extra Deep
1000+
5000+
Not used
You can limit the sounding sector of interest with the angle and
coverage fields. The “Max. Coverage” values will vary with sounder
model. Safe default settings that won’t clip your data are listed below
(these do not indicate potential achievable coverage, they’re just
safely bigger than coverage so that we never accidentally clip data):
EM710: 3000 m is a safe default
EM302: 9000 m is a safe default
EM122: 30000 m is a safe default
Start up
Choose “HIDENS EQDIST” for beam
spacing mode to collect the maximum
number of soundings across the swath.
Setting the “Angular Coverage Mode” to AUTO will allow the sounder
to adjust the angular sector in response to what it can reasonably
track, e.g. it will reduce the sector if it finds that it cannot track at
large angles, this allows for an increased ping rate.
You can force the sounder to attempt to track over a larger sector by
setting this into MANUAL mode. Your ping rate will drop and you will
not gain additional data if the system cannot detect the bottom at the
outer edge of the swath.
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Start up
Turn “Pitch stabilization” on.
Turn “Yaw stabilization” on
with “REL. MEAN HEADING”
Mode.
If you are synchronizing the
sounder with other acoustic
instrumentation, be sure to click
the “External Trigger” checkbox.
Otherwise, make sure it is
unchecked since the sounder will
not ping until it receives an
external transmit trigger.
Multibeam Advisory Committee – July 14, 2012
Start up
Load a sound speed profile
by clicking this button to
launch a file browser.
The sound speed at the transducer is used for beamforming and beam steering. It is a very
critical measurement. If you have a surface velocimeter, then you should always choose SENSOR
as the source of sound speed at the transducer. This is the optimal method of compensating for
surface sound speed variations.
If you do not have such a sensor (or if it is malfunctioning), you can compute the sound speed
from a thermosalinograph and then choose “MANUAL” and enter the value in the “Sound
Speed” field. If you don’t have access to a thermosalinograph, you can choose “PROFILE” as the
source. This will lookup the transducer sound speed from the currently loaded sound speed
profile. These last two modes are suboptimal: the manual method requires continual manual
updating, the profile method is only good if the profile is up-to-date. You should strive to have a
working surface velocimeter along with a spare.
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Multibeam Advisory Committee – July 14, 2012
Start up
Choose the most recent sound speed profile. The
sound speed profile is not terribly important if you’re
just testing the sounder to make sure everything is
working. If you’re about to start a survey, then you
should have just measured a sound speed profile
and you should choose that file for upload.
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Start up
Once you have chosen a profile, the filename field
will turn yellow to indicate that you have made a
change that has not been applied yet. Apply the
sounds speed profile by clicking the “Use Sound
Speed Profile” button.
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Start up
You can set various
bathymetric filters. You
should read the
manual to understand
what each of these do
(too much detail to get
into here). Cruise
scientists may have
thoughts on which
filters they’d like to
apply; you should
provide them with the
manual. The settings
recommended in the
manual should be safe
for default values.
Multibeam Advisory Committee – July 14, 2012
The “Sector Tracking”
filter normalizes the
seabed imagery
(backscatter) in realtime in an
irrecoverable manner.
If backscatter is of
primary interest, then
this should be disabled.
The “Absorption Coefficient”
controls the real-time
normalization of the seabed
imagery. Only choose the
“CTD” option if you are
uploading SVP profiles with
temperature and salinity data
in them (the MAC SVP Editor
does this when delivering
profiles over the network). If
you aren’t then choosing
“Salinity” is the next best
method. Using the mean
ocean salinity is a better
practice then updating this
field with the surface salinity
value. This value is best left
alone once entered since any
changes will lead to changes in
seabed imagery signal level
and can create headaches in
post-processing.
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Start up
You should read the manual to decide if
you should apply real-time Data Cleaning.
Having “None” is the safest option.
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Start up
If the science party will be correcting for heave residuals in
post-processing then you will need to log the appropriate file
type. Most deep water work does not benefit much from
post-processing of heave since the artifacts are so small
compared to the sounding uncertainties at great depth.
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Additional Settings
• Automatic file incrementing interval
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Start up
Access a menu of additional parameters
through the following menus: Tools>Custom…->Set parameters.
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Start up
There are numerous additional settings that
can be modified in these menus. Familiarize
yourself with them when you first begin
operating the system. As your experience with
the sounder system increases, you should
revisit these once in a while as your
understanding of what each setting does will
increase with time and you will be able to
make more informed decisions.
Multibeam Advisory Committee – July 14, 2012
You can set the line increment interval
here. This sets how often the system
will create a new data file. This is likely
going to be a setting that will vary from
scientist to scientist and thus is one of
the few settings in here that you may
need to change on a cruise by cruise
basis. Note that you will have to restart
SIS for this setting change to take effect.
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Saving Your Settings
• Save all of your Installation and Runtime
settings for backup and for easy reload
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Save your installation and run-time
parameters by accessing the following
menu: File->Export PU parameters…
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SIS has a recommended
default location for
configuration files. You should
use this as it will ease the task
of loading pre-set parameters
with different operators. You
should also back these files up
on another computer and take
great care to make sure they
are not modified.
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Choose a filename that is sensible and
easy for others to understand. Having
the date in the filename is useful for
keeping track of setting history. Using
YYYYMMDD as the file prefix allows for
easier setting management since the
files will be ordered in time when
sorted by name in file browser
windows.
If you’re curious, you can examine the
contents of the file (open in Wordpad
due to line-ending confusion in
Notepad). Be VERY careful not to
modify it. Modifying the text file to
change settings is NOT
RECOMMENDED!!!
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Add a meaningful comment when prompted. This
helps with setting history management. If you had a
particular reason to change the default settings, this
is a good place to document it.
You can reload these system settings in the future by accessing
the following menus: File->Import PU parameters. YOU WILL
NEED TO RESTART SIS AFTER IMPORT.
It is good practice to spend time deciding on reasonable default
settings and then saving them such that any operator can
quickly bring the system to a safe default state.
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Questions? Feedback? Suggestions?
• Please email us:
– mac-help@unols.org
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