Furuno Electric Company Limited

Tokihiko Hamada

Yoshinari Yoshida

Hidetoshi Kaida

Tatsuo Hayashi

Hiroyasu Fujimoto

Genzi Mori

Yoshiki Tominaga

Yasuo Kawabata

Yuzuru Hiraoka

A forward-looking sonar includes a transducer array which is divided into a first sub array and a second sub array, a first beamforming section for forming a first receiving beam with the first sub array, and a second beamforming section for forming a second receiving beam with the second sub array. The forward-looking sonar receives target echoes from a wide sounding area with these receiving beams. The forward-looking sonar further includes a position measurement section for determining the position of a target based on the direction of the target calculated from a phase difference between the echoes from the target received by the first and second receiving beams by a split-beam method and the distance to the target calculated from time needed for receiving the echoes after transmission.

Forward-looking sonar and underwater image display system

An underwater detection system for displaying underwater conditions over a large area around a ship comprises a linear array type transducer, a transducer training mechanism for rotating the transducer stepwise in a horizontal plane, a receiver which forms a receiving beam for scanning a fan-like vertical cross-sectional area by giving specified time delays or phase differences to echo signals received by the transducer, an image memory for storing echo signal data picked up by the receiving beam in addresses defined by horizontal directions relative to the ship and depths, a sampling circuit for reading out data of one vertical line after another in a downward direction from the image memory and determining a bottom depth in each vertical line, a seabed data memory for storing bottom depths, a PPI image generator for producing a fractional PPI image depicting the bottom based on bottom depth data read from the seabed data memory, and an indicator for presenting search results in the form of a plan view covering a large area of search around the ship by jointly displaying fractional PPI images produced by the PPI image generator.

Underwater detection system

Growing community of inventors

Nishinomiya, Japan

Tokihiko Hamada