Airmar Unveils New Broadband Transducers
Company’s CHIRP Enabling Transducers Provide High Sensitivity and Bandwidth at an Affordable Price.
AIRMAR Technology Corporation has announced the introduction of their new broadband transducers that enable CHIRP technology. Some of the company’s broadband transducers are already supplied as original equipment to industry-leading manufacturers of hydrographic survey sounders and advanced commercial-fishing systems. “Airmar has successfully developed methods for increasing transducer bandwidth with minimal effect on acoustic sensitivity,” stated John Bauchat, Senior Business Development Engineer. “This is a low-cost/high-value performance enhancement to our OEMs who rely on us to help them achieve optimal system performance. As this product line continues to evolve and expand, some industry standards are likely to be redefined,” Bauchat added.
The acoustic performance of Airmar’s broadband piezoceramic transducers include extremely low-ringing and excellent sensitivity across the -3dB bandwidth. This results in improved resolution and measurement accuracy in applications such as hydrographic survey, flow-sensing, fish-detection, and water column profiling. Traditional hydrographic survey sounders and fish detection sonars that operate at a discrete frequency (or over a narrow band of frequencies) typically use high power, short-duration pulses. This technique is partly due to the limited bandwidth of ‘traditional’ high Q transducers. In contrast, broadband transducers may be used to project a precise sweep of multiple frequencies at a lower power over a longer-duration pulse, so that the total sound energy transmitted into the water can be many times greater than that of a more conventional sounder. Furthermore, the echo energy returning to the transducer is processed by the sounder’s DSP and displayed in ultra-sharp detail on the display. The combination of CHIRP transmission, a broadband transducer, and the sounder’s DSP, result in superior acoustic imaging.
