A single cycle in which the sonar sends a pulse and listens for the echoes before sending the next. Ping rate is capped by the two-way travel time to the furthest seabed it must hear, so a multibeam can ping dozens of times a second in 10 m of water but only once every several seconds in the deep ocean. Ping rate and boat speed together set along-track sounding density, and with it feature detection.
We're only getting 4 pings a second in 80 metres, drop to 6 knots or we'll miss the boulders.
Also heard as
- ping rate
- pinging
Related terms
MBES
Multibeam echo sounder: a sonar that measures a fan of depths across the track on every ping, covering a wide swath.
Feature detection
The ability of a survey system to find seabed objects of a stated minimum size, usually given as a cube edge length.
Dropout
Missing pings or beams where the sonar failed to record a valid depth, leaving gaps in the data.
Sounding
A single measured depth at a known position, or a depth figure printed on a chart.