The application of acoustic backscattering to the measurement of suspended sediment transport is being increasingly employed. This is due to the unique property of acoustics being able to measure profiles using a single instrument. Also the profiles can readily be obtained with a high spatial and temporal resolution, and this is beginning to provide detailed images of suspended sediments which have the potential to significantly advance our understanding of suspension processes. However, at periods of high concentration, when sound attenuation due to sediment scattering becomes significant, the inversion technique used to obtain the suspended sediment profiles, can, due to relatively small errors ∼5%–10%, generate unbounded concentration profiles which diverge to infinity or zero. Therefore at the periods of greatest scientific interest, the acoustic technique can encounter difficulties. In the present work the bed echo is utilized to identify the input errors, and constrain the calculated concentration profiles, and therefore enable acoustics to play a useful role at high concentration levels.
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Thorne et al. (1995) studied this question.