EK Mission Planner

This EK mission planner is a planning and programming tool for autonomous echo sounders such as Simrad WBAT and Simrad WBT Mini. You can set up all necessary parameters related to "wakeup" and "sleep" times for the echo sounder, as well as transmission modes, intervals, and other parameters.

After you have planned the deployment carefully, all settings are uploaded to the transceiver.

In addition to running a predefine schedule, you can first use the EK Mission Planner to define the ping configurations and send these to the instrument. Then you can use the "interactive mode" (or "command mode" if you like) to control the transmissions from an external source such as an onboard controller. "Interactive mode" also enables the reading of key information such as mean volume backscattering strength in layers in real-time.

Key Features

• Control of all necessary parameters needed to  program a mission plan
• The mission plan is set by programming in Ping Groups, Ping Group Libraries, Phases, and Ensembles
• License-free software 

Typical applications

• Ocean observatories
• Fish migration studies
• Long-term biological studies
• Improved fish stock assessment
• Water column profiling

When making a mission plan you start by selecting the transducer(s) you will use for the deployment. The next step is to define ping groups, i.e. all parameters for a ping, such as CW (Continuous Wave) versus FM (Frequency Modulated), pulse duration, transmit power, and so on. The third step is to define the duration of the deployment which can be divided into several phases. Usually, it's sufficient to use only one single phase. The last step in the mission planning is to put the ping groups you defined into ensembles. You can choose if the ensembles shall be repeated for a fixed number of iterations or for as many times as possible within the time span you choose. After planning the mission, you can set the environmental parameters. After completing these steps, you are ready to connect to the transceiver, send the mission plan to the transceiver and deploy.