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

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.

An improved positioning model of deep-seafloor datum point at large incidence angle

The inhomogeneous sound speed in seawater causes refraction of sound waves,and the elimination of the refraction effect is essential to the accuracy of underwater acoustic positioning.The raytracing method is an indispensable tool for effectively handling problems.However,this method has a conflict between localization accuracy and computational quantity.The equivalent sound speed profile(ESSP)method uses a simple sound speed profile(SSP)instead of the actual complex SSP,which can improve positioning precision but with residual error.The residual error is especially non-negligible in deep water and at large beam incidence angles.By analyzing the residual error of the ESSP method through a simulation,an empirical formula of error is presented.The data collected in the sailing circle mode(large incidence angle)of the South China Sea are used for verification.The experiments show that compared to the ESSP method,the improved algorithm has higher positioning precision and is more efficient than the ray-tracing method.

Three-dimensional constrained gravity inversion of Moho depth and crustal structural characteristics at Mozambique continental margin

Mozambique's continental margin in East Africa was formed during the break-off stage of the east and west Gondwana lands. Studying the geological structure and division of continent-ocean boundary(COB) in Mozambique's continental margin is considered of great significance to rebuild Gondwana land and understand its movement mode. Along these lines, in this work, the initial Moho was fit using the known Moho depth from reflection seismic profiles, and a 3D multi-point constrained gravity inversion was carried out. Thus, highaccuracy Moho depth and crustal thickness in the study area were acquired. According to the crustal structure distribution based on the inversion results, the continental crust at the narrowest position of the Mozambique Channel was detected. According to the analysis of the crustal thickness, the Mozambique ridge is generally oceanic crust and the COB of the whole Mozambique continental margin is divided.

Automatic segmentation of gas plumes from multibeam water column images using a U-shape network

Cold seeps are widely developed on the seabed of continental margins and can form gas plumes due to the upward migration of methane-rich fluids.The detection and automatic segmentation of gas plumes are of great significance in locating and studying the cold seep system that is usually accompanied by hydrate layers in the subsurface.A multibeam echo-sounder system(MBES)can record the complete backscatter intensity of the water column,and it is one of the most effective means for detecting cold seeps.However,the gas plumes recorded in multibeam water column images(WCI)are usually blurred due to the interference of the complicated water environment and the sidelobes of the MBES,making it difficult to obtain the effective segmentation.Therefore,based on the existing UNet semantic segmentation network,this paper proposes an AP-UNet network combining the convolutional block attention module and the pyramid pooling module for the automatic segmentation and extraction of gas plumes.Comparative experiments are conducted among three traditional segmentation methods and two deep learning methods.The results show that the AP-UNet segmentation model can effectively suppress complicated water column noise interference.The segmentation precision,the Dice coefficient,and the recall rate of this model are 92.09%,92.00%,and 92.49%,respectively,which are 1.17%,2.10%,and 2.07%higher than the results of the UNet.

Basis functions for shallow-water temperature profiles based on the internal-wave eigenmodes

The shallow-water temperature profile is typically parameterized using a few empirical orthogonal function(EOF)coefficients.However,when the experimental area is poorly known or highly variable,the adaptability of the EOFs will be significantly reduced.In this study,a new set of basis functions,generated by combining the internal-wave eigenmodes with the average temperature gradient,is developed for characterizing the temperature perturbations.Temperature profiles recorded by a thermistor chain in the South China Sea in 2015 are processed and analyzed.Compared to the EOFs,the new set of basis functions has higher reconstruction accuracy and adaptability;it is also more stable in ocean regions that have internal waves.

Acoustic sound speed profile inversion based on orthogonal matching pursuit

The estimation of ocean sound speed profiles(SSPs)requires the inversion of an acoustic field using limited observations.Such inverse problems are underdetermined,and require regularization to ensure physically realistic solutions.The empirical orthonormal function(EOF)is capable of a very large compression of the data set.In this paper,the non-linear response of the sound pressure to SSP is linearized using a first order Taylor expansion,and the pressure is expanded in a sparse domain using EOFs.Since the parameters of the inverse model are sparse,compressive sensing(CS)can help solve such underdetermined problems accurately,efficiently,and with enhanced resolution.Here,the orthogonal matching pursuit(OMP)is used to estimate range-independent acoustic SSPs using the simulated acoustic field.The superior resolution of OMP is demonstrated with the SSP data from the South China Sea experiment.By shortening the duration of the training set,the temporal correlation between EOF and test sets is enhanced,and the accuracy of sound velocity inversion is improved.The SSP estimation error versus depth is calculated,and the 99%confidence interval of error is within±0.6 m/s.The 82%of mean absolute error(MAE)is less than 1 m/s.It is shown that SSPs can be well estimated using OMP.

Lunar deflections of the vertical and their distribution

The deflection of the vertical reflects the mass distribution and density anomaly of celestial bodies. Lunar deflections of the vertical include directional information of the Moon’s gravity field. SGM90d, recovered from SELENE mission, revealed the lunar far side gravity field for the first time in history owes to 4-way Doppler data. Lunar deflections of the vertical and their meridional and prime vertical components are calculated from SGM90d, and then their global distributions are also given in the paper. The gradients of lunar deflections of the vertical are defined and computed as well. The correlations between the lunar deflections of the vertical and the lunar terrain have been fully discussed. Many different characteristics of lunar deflections of vertical have been found between the near side and the far side of the Moon, which may be caused from the lithospheric compensation and the uplifting of mantle.

Automatic calibration for wobble errors in shallow water multibeam bathymetries

The wobble errors caused by the imperfect integration of motion sensors and transducers in multibeam echo-sounder systems(MBES)manifest as high-frequency wobbles in swaths and hinder the accurate expression of high-resolution seabed micro-topography under a dynamic marine environment.There are many types of wobble errors with certain coupling among them.However,those current calibration methods ignore the coupling and are mainly manual adjustments.Therefore,we proposed an automatic calibration method with the coupling.First,given the independence of the transmitter and the receiver,the traditional georeferenced model is modified to improve the accuracy of footprint reduction.Secondly,based on the improved georeferenced model,the calibration model associated with motion scale,time delay,yaw misalignment,lever arm errors,and soundings is constructed.Finally,the genetic algorithm(GA)is used to search dynamically for the optimal estimation of the corresponding error parameters to realize the automatic calibration of wobble errors.The simulated data show that the accuracy of the calibrated data can be controlled within 0.2%of the water depth.The measured data show that after calibration,the maximum standard deviation of the depth is reduced by about 5.9%,and the mean standard deviation of the depth is reduced by about 11.2%.The proposed method has significance in the precise calibration of dynamic errors in shallow water multibeam bathymetrie s.