> bubbles act like acoustic black holes, they absorb sound like crazy. Whether you're trying to ping through them in the water, or also if they get stuck on the transducer.
I have no idea about nautical applications but in medical imaging you use a phased array ultrasonic transducer which is really a set of single-beams with deterministic phase firing of the ultrasound.
You could probably implement a similar phased array principle by coupling multiple 'ocean grade' single beams. That would give you both beam directionality and I suspect higher immunity to bubble artefacts if you play with it in the time domain.
I have no idea about nautical applications but in medical imaging you use a phased array ultrasonic transducer which is really a set of single-beams with deterministic phase firing of the ultrasound.
You could probably implement a similar phased array principle by coupling multiple 'ocean grade' single beams. That would give you both beam directionality and I suspect higher immunity to bubble artefacts if you play with it in the time domain.