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Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler Data Processing System

Created by:
Jessica M. Cote, Frances S. Hotchkiss, Marinna Martini, Charles R. Denham

Additional revisions by:
Andree L. Ramsey and Stephen Ruane

Maintained and updated by:
Marinna Martini

What's New:

There is a new beta available for version 7.0. Get it here. It includes the following noteable changes: an important correction to the treatment of declination of EARTH coordinate data updated documentation on how to use this toolbox with waves data - significant for folks using wave ADCPs improved batch processing As before, we will publish the documentation as a revision to USGS open file report (USGS OFR 00-458) and release the software as official version 7.0 at that time. The new documentation and a complete list of revisions are in the .zip file We would appreciate any feedback to the email adcp_tools@usgs.gov


ADCP Data Processing System Version 6.0

Impatient? Download the ADCP Toolbox Version 6.0 now.

What is the ADCP Data Processing System?

Our Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler Data Processing System, or ADCP Tools for short, is a set of documented MATLAB m-files which convert RDI data to NetCDF format, load the data into MATLAB, process and display the data. Beam to earth rotations can be computed if data was recorded in beam. Velocity, intensity, % good, and correlation data as well as ancillary data such as temperature and sound speed are available on a beam by bin basis, and as a 3D plot.

Why not use RD Instruments' software?

RDI's software suite for processing and displaying ADCP data is terrific if you are doing work in real time or looking at profiles. For those of us using the ADCP for time series work, RDI has a windows based viewer. But many of us transfer the data to other software packages for plotting, 'massaging', and batch processing. What we offer here is a method of transferring to, working on, and viewing your data in MATLAB.

For more gory details on the ADCP Toobox...

The following is a recommended reading list for the ADCP Toolbox:

  • View the ADCP Data Processing System Manual (USGS OFR 00-458)
  • View website describing NetCDF (Network Common Data Form)

Before downloading...

Please send a message to adcp_tools@usgs.gov (ADCP tools address) if you download this software. Even if you already signed up for the previous version, we would like to know who is using the latest version. You may also use the address to report bugs and send feedback. If we know who you are, we can let you know when we have fixed bugs!

A note about your e-mail and privacy: the USGS privacy disclaimer states that we will not distribute your personal information. We collect these e-mails to know a) if it's worth our time maintaining this site and b) to notify you of updates to the software.

Requirements:

The following is a list of items required to run the ADCP Toolbox:

  • MATLAB 7.0 or higher, from Mathworks
  • The NetCDF Toolbox and mexnc, two sets of m-files for accessing NetCDF. Mexnc is the netcdf interface going forward. The netCDF toolbox (link at the bottom of the page) is currently frozen but is required as the ADCP toolbox is not fully switched to mexnc yet. It can still be downloaded from http://mexcdf.sourceforge.net/downloads/. The ADCP toolbox is very dependent on the netCDF toolbox and we are reviewing where to go from here.
  • The ADCP Toolbox 6.0, a set of m-files for processing RDI ADCP Data.
  • Click here if you need WinZip

Helpful Hints

  • View the readme file to review the setup and installation instructions
  • View the list of m-files in the ADCP Toolbox
  • View the list of revisions and additions for the current version.

Caveats:

  • These files are tailored to our studies here at the Woods Hole Field Center. As we receive feed back (and find the time) we will add more features, streamline code, improve documentation, etc.
  • Understand that our primary role for the USGS is to carry out field studies and we do not have a huge staff to maintain software. We will, however, try to respond to issues as our field schedule and priorities allow us the time.

Why are we doing this?

  • What we get from you is insight into methodology and improvements to the software.
  • We hope that you will contribute modules for others to use, we will post submitted contributions here.

Older versions of the ADCP Toolbox

Here are links to the older versions of this work. We no longer actively support these versions or their webpages. But the links are provided in case anyone needs an older version of something or is just curious to see the evolutionary process to the ADCP Processing System...


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