An improved algorithm based on equivalent sound velocity profile method at large incident angle

Abstract

With the development of ultra-wide coverage technology, multibeam echo-sounder (MBES) system has put forward higher requirements for localization accuracy and computational efficiency of ray tracing method. The classical equivalent sound speed profile (ESSP) method replaces the measured sound velocity profile (SVP) with a simple constant gradient SVP, reducing the computational workload of beam positioning. However, in deep-sea environment, the depth measurement error of this method rapidly increases from the central beam to the edge beam. By analyzing the positioning error of the ESSP method at edge beam, it is discovered that the positioning error increases monotonically with the incident angle, and the relationship between them could be expressed by polynomial function. Therefore, an error correction algorithm based on polynomial fitting is obtained. The simulation experiment conducted on an inclined seafloor shows that the proposed algorithm exhibits comparable efficiency to the original ESSP method, while significantly improving bathymetry accuracy by nearly eight times in the edge beam.