Underwater Signal Processing Techniques for Sediment Classification

The nature of seafloor/riverfloor affects on some areas such as defense (mine countermeasures), environmental (habitat mapping and protection), economic (fisheries, mining), and maritime (dredging of harbors and channels). To predict the water storage capacity of the river dam, it is essential to know the topography of the seafloor/riverfloor. Collection of samples of seafloor/riverfloor sediment and their characterizations are tedious and time consuming tasks even for a small areas. Thus acoustic remote sensing techniques are useful for rapid seafloor/riverfloor characterization. The main tasks of underwater sediment classification are underwater signal acquisition, feature extraction from underwater signal and classification of underwater signal. This paper reviews and discusses the tasks of underwater sediment classification underwater signal acquisition techniques, different feature extraction methods and classification techniques used for underwater sediment classification.