Hello d747
Hi there. It was said here in France that the "Pourquoi pas ?" should begin a "2nd phase" (the 1st was the search of the ULB/pingers) of underwater searches using a multibeam high resolution sonar (the SAR: Système Acoustique Remorqué, or Towed Acoustic System, used to locate the Titanic) for 4 to 6 weeks. Merging full res SAR lateral images with the AF 447 pieces of fuselage shows that there should be very good chances to detect the wreck, it could look like this (not a SAR simulation)
Search parameters: operational speed at which the SAR must be operated (as a function of the desired resolution), Reference value in the report ~2 NM per hour (full res), search area of 16 000 km² (or a 70 NM square), the width of two lateral images is 512 pixels or 128 meters at full resolution (footprint), which will not be practicable on the entire search area. But with a medium resolution (the middle SAR image), the search area could be scanned in ~50 days (more at sea!). Search strategies could vary the SAR resolution as a function of an a priori probability to find the wreck in a given area. But the very difficult bathymetry will probably slow the operations.
Jeff
Source:
http://www.ifremer.fr/flotte/systeme...du%20SAR-1.pdf