Assessment of acoustic backscatter intensity surveying on deep-sea ferromanganese crust: Constraints from Weijia Guyot, western Pacific Ocean

Near-bottom observation data from the manned deep submersible Jiaolong with high-precision underwater positioning data from Weijia Guyot,Magellan Seamounts in the Western Pacific Ocean are reported.Three substrate types were identified:Sediment,ferromanganese crust,and ferromanganese crust with a thin cover of sediment.The ferromanganese crusts show clear zoning and their continuity is usually disturbed by sediments on areas of the mountainside with relatively gentle slope gradients.The identified substrate spatial distributions correspond to acoustic backscatter intensity data,with regions of high intensity always including crust development and regions of low intensity always having sediment.Therefore,acoustic backscatter intensity surveying appears useful in the delineation and evaluation of crust resources,although further more work is needed to develop a practicable methodology.

China’s first deep manned submersible,JIAOLONG

A deep manned submersible is indispensable to deep ocean exploration. No other equipment can bring scientists to ex-treme sea floor depths to do research in situ. Marine geology, seafloor geophysics,marine biology,and oceanic chemistry are the fields that scientists are particularly eager to study [1-6]. Chinese scientists have long dreamed of using their own submersible to probe the deep sea. China’s recent fast development of a deep manned submersible has realized that dream.

Signal processing in underwater acoustic communication system for manned deep submersible "Jiaolong"

For the first time in the world, underwater acoustic transmission of images, human voice, data and texts between vehicle under 7000 m depth and surface ship was accomplished by underwater acoustic communication system of manned deep submersible Jiaolong＇. In this paper, signal processing in underwater acoustic communication system for manned deep submersible ＂Jiaolong＂ is introduced. （1） Four communication methods are integrated to meet different needs： 1） coherent underwater acoustic communication, with a variable transmission rate from 5 kbps to 15 kbps, to transmit images. 2） Non-coherent underwater acoustic com- munication, with a transmission rate 300 bps, to transmit texts, instructions, and sensor data. 3） Spread spectrum underwater acoustic communication, with a transmission rate 16 bps, to transmit instructions. 4） Underwater voice communication, using single sideband modulation to transmit hmnan voice. （2） Signal processing method in coherent communication mainly consists of concatenation of decision feedback equalizer and Turbo decoder, and wavelet based image compression with fixed length coding. In the equalizer, Doppler compensation, multi- channel combining and equalizer coefficients updating are all using fast self-optimized adaptive algorithm. （3） A linear hydrophone array is lowered from the mother ship to certain depth, and spatial diversity combining technology is adopted. （4） Diving trials of ＂Jiaolong＂ were carried out in Pacific Ocean. The communication range can cover nearly all ocean depth. One optical/acoustic image can be transmitted in 7 or 14 seconds.