MEMS technology quality requirements as applied to multibeam echosounder

Small, lightweight, power-efficient, and low-cost microelectromechanical system (MEMS) inertial sensors and microcontrollers, available in the market today, help reduce the instability of Multibeam Sonars. Current MEMS inertial measurement units (IMUs) come in many shapes, sizes, and costs — depending on the application and performance required. Although MEMS inertial sensors offer affordable, appropriately scaled units, they are not currently capable of meeting all requirements for accurate and precise attitudes, due to their inherent measurement noise. The article presents the comparison of different MEMS technologies, and their parameters regarding to the main application; namely, Multibeam Echo Sounders (MBES). The MEMS parameters’ quality are crucial for further MBES record- processing, the article presents the results of undertaken researches in that area, and the results are relatively positive for low-cost MEMS.