Performance of a broad-band acoustic Doppler current profiler

A new broadband acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) is described, with a useful range comparable to that of a commercially available narrowband (incoherent) system of the same acoustic frequency, but having enhanced performance. The extra performance may be traded off among (1) reduced velocity variance, (2) reduced averaging time, and (3) finer depth resolution. This improvement permits the observation of phenomena with smaller time and space scales than is now possible with available ADCPs. An expression predicting r.m.s. velocity error in terms of system parameters and the measured acoustic data is given and is shown to be consistent with the independently measured velocity error among redundant beams. Two major sources of bias error in incoherent ADCPs are shown to be much reduced for the broadband system. Field data demonstrating the improved performance over the existing incoherent ADCP are shown for cases of both strong and weak shear