Simulated Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Sonar (InSAS) Data of the SS Thistlegorm Wreck

Data collection method:

The data were generated using a point-based model, which sums the simulated aspect-dependent amplitude-weighted echoes from a set of points distributed across the surface of the 3D model. There are a total of 30 million facets in the 3D model, and these were decomposed into a cloud of almost 1 billion points. The points were randomly distributed with a mean density of 10 points per resolution cell and occlusions were resolved by ray-tracing. The data have been pulse-compressed and compensated for spherical spreading under the assumption of negligible attenuation.

Technical details and requirements:

There are 368 ping files. Each file contains a 72 by 13751 matrix of complex values corresponding to 2x36 array elements and 13751 time samples. The sampling parameters are contained in the metadata file. There are 10 bathymetry files containing ideal depth maps on a horizontal x-y grid. The first one contains depths to the uppermost surfaces in the scene. The others contain depths at subsequent levels of layover. All files are in .mat format and can be read using Matlab or Python SciPy.