Towfish orientation and position estimation

Author

Kirlin, R.L. ; Lu, W.-S. ; Hedstrom, B. ; Leung, C.M.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Victoria Univ., BC, Canada

Volume

18

Issue

3

fYear

1993

fDate

7/1/1993 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

319

Lastpage

326

Abstract

The towfish location and orientation problems that arise in using side-scan sonar to detect objects on the sea bottom are treated separately. Data which locate the towfish relative to the ship are usually deteriorated by multipath receptions and other effects. In order to overcome this serious degradation in the location measurements, a modified Kalman filter is proposed. An estimate of the state transition matrix for this filter is derived, and a means of switching between two Kalman gains is suggested. The feasibility of the proposed filter is justified by a case study. Improved estimates of towfish pitch and heading measurements are obtained by a separate system employing model identification and subsequent Kalman filtering. Application of these methods to data from similar towed side-scan sonar systems should yield significant gains in object location accuracy

Keywords

Kalman filters; filtering and prediction theory; geophysical techniques; oceanographic techniques; parameter estimation; position measurement; radar interference; sonar; underwater sound; marine sediment; measurement; modified Kalman filter; multipath receptions; ocean; position estimation; remote sensing; sea bottom; seafloor obstacle; side-scan sonar; state transition matrix; technique; towfish location; towfish pitch; Degradation; Filtering; Kalman filters; Marine vehicles; Object detection; Sea measurements; Sonar applications; Sonar detection; Sonar measurements; State estimation;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Oceanic Engineering, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0364-9059

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JOE.1993.236371

Filename

236371