Solstice MAS – Multi-Aperture Side-Scan Sonar

Solstice MAS – Dependable high quality Side-Scan Sonar imaging

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Solstice MAS is a unique family of Multi-Aperture Sonars (MAS) designed to provide world-class imagery by blending the high performance of Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) with the reliability and robustness of conventional Side-Scan Sonar (SSS).

Capture every feature and every detail in ultra-high resolution. Solstice MAS significantly increases the operational envelope of your underwater vehicle by providing wide swath coverage, at high resolution – all while consuming very low power.

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What our customers say

“Excellent results to say the least out to 100-m range, especially compared to SAS systems producing similar results burning about 175W as opposed to Solstice at about 30W with real-time processing. For our size UUVs, considering the energy capacity, this is a significant advantage particularly for customers performing wide area surveys (deep or shallow) coupled with optical object-identification surveys/ATR.” John Sloat, Applications Engineering Lead, Principal Investigator at L3Harris AUV Systems

Solstice at a glance

Mission ready; designed to support search, classify and map (SCM) and hydrographic operations
Small and compact arrays; optimised for low-logistic AUV tracking and towed bodies
Survey more ground in a single pass; 200 m-wide swath ensures high coverage rates

Along track resolution of 0.15°; best in class delivering maximum detection rates
Co-registered side-scan imagery and bathymetry
Consumes only 18 W; power budget friendly increases your AUV’s endurance

Solstice Sonar is suitable for:

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Site survey and characterisation

Mine Counter Measures

Towed and Remotely operated vehicles

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Benefits of Solstice for your survey operations

High tempo

Large swaths of 100m on each side at speeds < 6 kts ensure large coverage rates, increasing your site characterisation efficiency without compromising on detail.

Pixel perfect

Class-leading imagery is provided to enable operators to make classification decisions with greater levels of confidence in less time.

AUV or towfish

Solstice MAS is the ideal solution for deployment in either an AUV or towfish for Mine Counter Measure (MCM) operations

SOLSTICE MAS OVERVIEW

World-class Multi Aperture Sonar Imagery

Solstice MAS is a unique family of Multi-Aperture Sonars designed to provide world-class imagery by blending the high performance of Synthetic Aperture Sonar with the reliability and robustness of conventional side-scan.

Advanced Multi-Ping Multi-Look (MPML) Processing Technology

Solstice can combine information from multiple transmission apertures or ‘pings’ over multiple ‘look’ directions using our proprietary Multi-Ping Multi-Look (MPML) processing technology to dramatically improve signal-to-noise ratios, creating stunning imagery at longer ranges than other sonars operating at similar frequencies. It has interferometric processing too, meaning you also get 3D bathymetric data co-located with the side-scan imagery. It’s the ideal choice for hydrographic, archaeological, search, salvage, unexploded ordnance, and mine countermeasure missions.

Pixel Perfect Side Scan Sonar Images

Unlike most conventional side-scan sonars which have a fixed range focus, Solstice uses a unique back-projection beam-forming technique to focus on every single (3cm x 3 cm) pixel in the image. This means Solstice MAS provides Pixel Perfect Imaging (P2I) throughout the range scale and not just within a narrow ‘sweet-spot’ around a fixed focal range.

Imagery from conventional side-scans is also distorted due to non-linear platform motion and may have gaps in coverage due to uncompensated platform attitude changes or accelerations.

Undistorted Sonar Imaging With 100% Ground Coverage

Solstice on the other hand uses knowledge of the platform motion to eliminate these effects, producing undistorted imagery with 100% ground coverage. This Motion Compensation (MOCOMP) is particularly valuable when Solstice is integrated onto smaller, low-logistic AUVs operating in littoral environments.

Such accurate imaging demands highly linear receiver element alignment, which cannot easily be achieved mechanically.

Real-time Array Calibration (RTAC) is therefore used to dynamically re-calibrate each hydrophone element several times a second to compensate for any dynamical strains causing array non-linearity.

High Contrast Imaging Sonar & Wide Elevation Coverage

Solstice has been designed to produce high-contrast imagery, even in shallow, littoral waters, eliminating noise from multi-path reverberation, enhancing the contrast of the imagery. It employs a unique Multi-path Suppression Array Technology (MSAT) generating the wide elevation coverage normally associated with wide vertical beamwidths, with the impressive shadow contrast associated with very narrow vertical beams.

Improve Your Underwater Detection Capability With Solstice MAS

The overall result is improved detection probability and decreased probability of false alarms improving the efficiency of your Mine Counter-Measures (MCM), archaeological, search and salvage missions.

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SOLSTICE MODELS

Solstice S4000-300 is a unique Multi-Aperture Sonar (MAS) designed to provide world-class imagery by blending the high performance of Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) with the reliability and robustness of conventional side-scan

Solstice S3000L-300 provides near SAS quality imagery and is used with a towed body or autonomous vehicles with an operating envelope down to 300m depth

Solstice S3000L-600 provides near SAS quality imagery and is designed for use on autonomous vehicles with a depth rating down to 600m

Solstice Viewer & Real Time (RT) On-board MAS processing

Solstice comes as standard with a comprehensive viewer providing a complete suite of analysis tools and with the option for low power on-board Real Time processing.

Solstice Viewer Software

The Solstice Viewer Client (VC) is a lightweight, easy-to-use data viewing tool which allows operators to rapidly view and interact with their side-scan (SWF) data without the need for expensive third-party software. It is designed to output both Waterfall and georeferenced KML (Keyhole Markup Language) data for Earth browsers such as Google Earth.

The SWF data contains co-registered imagery and bathymetry data, together with other navigation metadata including latitude, longitude, heading, pitch, roll, altitude, heave and speed over ground.

Should end-users choose to display their Solstice data in third party software viewers, Solstice VC can act as a quality assurance tool. Since our VC will display data at the maximum possible image quality, the images obtained from the third-party viewers can be cross-referenced against VC imagery to confirm successful integration.

Display Modes

Displays port & starboard imagery together (traditional waterfall). It can be stretched across two monitors to increase screen area
Single Side Mode. Port/Starboard only to focus on data from a single side
Fit to screen or scrollable 1:1 resolution options
2D graphical plots of navigation data which are displayed alongside the waterfall data
Colour chooser. Provides additional colour map options
3D Digital Terrain Map (DTM) of the acoustic data

Key Tools

Snippet Window – provides a zoomed window(s) for analysing details at full resolution while continuing to display and navigate the full picture
Measurement Tool – used to infer the object height by measuring the length of its shadow

Default Viewer Integration

EIVA NaviSuite
SeeByte SeeTrack
Moga SeaView MOSAIC
Triton Imaging
HYPACK® SURVEY
Chesapeake SonarWiz Sidescan
Teledyne CARIS
Plus, others which can import XTF

Real Time on-board MAS Processing

Produces real time motion compensated data (SWF) available to onboard embedded ATR or other onward processing
Allows data (SWF, SSF and XTF) to stream to removeable storage
Reduces post mission processing time and effort
Low processing power requirement of 8W (less if running on existing computers)

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Plymouth breakwater using false colour bathymetry

Why invest in Solstice MAS?

Technical

Frequency band: (725 to 775) kHz
Source Level: 220 dB Re 1 uPa @ 1 m
Receive channels: 2 x (32 + 4)
Transmit Channels: 2 x 32

Performance

Depth rated to 300m (600m option also available)
Across track resolution 37.5 mm
Along-track resolution 0.15°
Geo-rectified waterfall display
Image pixel resolution 30 mm x 30 mm
Co-registered side-scan imagery and bathymetry
Real-time ATR option

Design

2 x array flanks each 682 mm in length, weighing 2.11 kg
Processing electronics in their own Payload Pressure Vessel (PPV) or as OEM
Simple to install and mount; full vehicle integration support provided
Uses widely available Subcon connectors