The data collected from an Aquadopp Profiler is used as an example in this case. The complete file format for each Midlife instrument (AQD/AQP/AWAC/Vector/Vectrino) can be found in the Help menu of the relevant software.

The .prf file is the output from the AquaPro software, in binary format. This file must be converted to ASCII format using the data conversion dialog to obtain the data files (.v1, .v2, .v3 .hdr, etc.).

The .hdr file contains valuable information about the file format of the other files, in addition to the setup and configuration of the instrument. 

The .sen file contains the sensor data, e.g. temperature, heading, tilt, sound speed, etc.  

.v1, .v2 and .v3 contain the velocity data (m/s) of each coordinate respectively in Beam, XYZ or ENU coordinates, depending on your setup:

• .v1 is Beam 1, or the X-axis (in XYZ), or East (in ENU)
• .v2 is Beam 2, or the Y-axis (in XYZ), or North (in ENU)
• .v3 is Beam 3, or the Z-axis (in XYZ), or Up (in ENU)

Each column of the file represents one cell. Say you have set the instrument to measure in 13 cells; in that case, .v1, .v2 and .v3 shall each have 13 columns. Each row is one measurement. The numbers you see in .v1, .v2 and .v3 represent the average of the measured velocity for a given period, according to the user-specified cell size. You cannot read the current direction from these numbers directly. If you notice how the instrument head is designed, you can see that the beams point in three different directions. The velocities measured by these three beams are combined to calculate the direction of the current. Hence, the relative orientation of the transducers is important. More information about this can be found in the Principles of Operation.

.a1, .a2 and .a3 contain amplitude data for each beam (.a1 is Beam 1, etc.), i.e. the strength of the return signal. Here also, each column is a cell and each row is a measurement. The units are counts.

Note also that the .dat file contains calculated speed/direction. You can get this file when converting the .prf file – just tick the "Profile" option (or "Profile CSV" for Excel format).