Abstract
In anticipation of upcoming turbine deployments in the Minas Passage, Bay of Fundy, the Offshore Energy Research Association (OERA) and the Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy (FORCE) have put together the ‘Pathway Program’ to establish a suite of integrated environmental monitoring sensors for monitoring bottom-deployed turbines and floating tidal energy platforms. The first phase of this program involves a comprehensive literature review for different instrument classes that may be incorporated in the final monitoring solution. This review of imaging (or multibeam) sonars is an attempt to summarize the capabilities of these instruments for monitoring tidal turbines and the lessons learned from previous efforts. By assembling this information during this Phase, the ‘Pathway Program’ will reduce the development timeline and increase the capabilities of the integrated instrumentation suite.
This report presents a summary of the literature review followed by an overview of the most relevant commercially available imaging sonars. Section IV provides a summary of six applications of imaging sonars for similar use cases. Sections V and VI discuss key considerations for the integration of the sonar into the instrument platform and lessons learned from previous deployments. Finally the 3 report concludes with the best-in-class recommendations and a list of the references used in the literature review.