An Embedded Compact PCI Computer System for a Synthetic Aperture Sonar Towfish

This paper describes the embedded computer system used in the towfish of the KiwiSAS-IV synthetic aperture sonar being developed by the Acoustics Research Group at the University of Canterbury. The sonar is designed for high-resolution seafloor imagery and bathymetry, requiring eighteen receiver channels to be simultaneously sampled and twenty four independent waveforms to be generated. The computer system is based on Compact PCI backplane and allows data to be streamed in real-time up the tow-cable to computers on the towboat for storage, image reconstruction, and display.