How To Use This Manual - NORBIT WBMS User And Technical Manual

1.3 Advantages of the Cylindrical Array
The WBMS broke the industry mold by bringing a low cost and compact yet highly accurate
cylindrical receiver array with highest signal bandwidth to the market. Below are some of the
advantages a cylindrical array offers.
•
Unlike a flat array, bottom detections from a cylindrical array are much less susceptible to
surface sound speed errors.
•
The WBMS does not begin to beam steer until ± 30° from nadir. This results in lower incidence
of depth error from the reduced beam width spreading as steering increases (flat receiver arrays
steer all beams but nadir).
•
At all frequencies, the WBMS provides increased swath coverage with a smaller beam footprint
for a fixed aperture.
•
The cylindrical array of the WBMS can cover a full 210°. Flat array systems would lose data
fidelity at much lower swath angles (± 80°) and would necessitate mounting two or three sonars
at angles to achieve higher swath coverage.
•
The cylindrical array presents a more hydrodynamic profile allowing for faster transit, less
vibration, and use of lighter mounting hardware. Sturdier mounting, such as hull mounts, enables
a maximum transit speed of >20 knots.
1.4 Advantages of the INS Integrated System
Factory integration of critical sensors yields a forgiving acquisition experience for the onboard
surveyor. Offsets between sonar measurement reference and inertial motion unit reference centers
are fixed and predefined within the system setup. The user need only measure from top center of
sonar bracket to bottom of primary antenna mount.
Cabling and software integration between sonar, positioning, heading, attitude and sound speed
probe is handled internally. The onboard surveyor need only connect the wet end to the topside via
a single cable and then connect the primary and secondary GNSS cables (which are each labelled
on both ends of the cable to remove installation uncertainty).
1.5

How to Use this Manual

This manual describes the complete installation and operation of all the NORBIT bathymetric Wide
Band Multibeam Systems (WBMS). This may be the WBMS, iWBMSe, iWBMSc, iWBMS, iWBMSh
or any of these in dual head configuration.
The reader is strongly encouraged to read this manual thoroughly. Doing so will encourage safe and
efficient operation in the collection of high quality beamformed bottom detections.
NORBIT makes every effort to ensure that the information contained in this manual is accurate and
fully updated to correspond with the latest sonar firmware and software releases. The sonar firmware
version being employed must correspond with the version listed at the bottom of each page in this
manual.
This manual is optimized for digital viewing using PDF viewing software. If a suitable browser is not
available then any web GUI (Firefox, Chrome, etc.) would work. The table of contents section will
link directly to each section listed. At the bottom of each page is a link to return to Table of Contents.
10.4.3 User Manual
Firmware: 5.2.1
Contents April 17, 2020
Page 8 of 142