Nortek As

Nortekusa, Llc.

R Lee Gordon

Atle Lohrmann

Sven Nylund

An AD2CP includes at least one transducer assembly emitting sets of slanted directional acoustic beams and receiving the echoes; and electronics that processes the echoes into depth cells and computes velocity in each depth cell. The AD2CP is configured so that each beam set has a profiling catenation, at least two of which are different, and the AD2CP is configured so that the emitting, receiving and processing operate contemporaneously.

Acoustic doppler dual current profiler system and method

A method and apparatus for determining the surface level of a given body using acoustic ranging that incorporates processes natural to human beings to improve identification of the echo from the water surface when spurious echoes might otherwise overshadow it. An acoustic beam is transmitted toward the surface where it is reflected. The beam also reflects off various interferences creating spurious reflections or echoes. The echoes from the surface as well as the spurious echoes are then received. Each echo is then evaluated according to several criteria, in order to determine which echo is associated with the surface. In one embodiment, a set of candidate echoes is identified, the one most likely to represent the surface is selected by using multiple different criteria for evaluating the echo, assigning each criteria a sensible quality factor, computing an overall quality factor by mathematically combining the individual quality factors, and identifying the surface peak as the peak with the highest overall quality factor. In one embodiment, an evaluation technique involves measuring the amplitude, signal to noise ratio, and width of a received echo. In another embodiment, a first echo is compared to subsequent echoes to determine if the subsequent echoes are multiple bounces of the first echo. In still another embodiment, an independent input device, such as a pressure sensor, is used to make a rough measurement of the surface level. In another embodiment, measurement history is used to analyze the received echoes in order to aid in determining which echo corresponds to the surface.

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San Diego, CA, United States of America

R Lee Gordon