Bathymetric multibeam echosounders (MBES) classically improve their bottom detection resolution by increasing the number of beams with narrower beamwidths. Many independent detections are thus obtained when extracting one sounding in each beam. However when the pulse footprint on the bottom gets narrower than the beamwidth, which often happens at high incidence angles, it is possible to extract several independent bottom detections within the same beam. These high-density soundings extraction methods present a still higher interest for MBES designed with rather “wide” beams (say 3° or more), so as to offer other benefits, such as compacity, low-cost, or low sidelobe levels as for fishery applications. This paper presents a simple way to derive multiple... |