METHOD FOR STEREOPHOTOGRAPHY OF BOTTOM TOPOGRAPHY OF WATER BODY AND APPARATUS FOR REALISING SAID METHOD Russian patent published in 2013 - IPC G01S15/89 

FIELD: physics.

SUBSTANCE: method for stereophotography of the bottom topography of a water body involves moving sonar equipment by a hydrographic ship which is fitted with devices for measuring speed and heading, a depth metre, a receiver-indicator of a satellite navigation system and/or a receiver-indicator of a radio navigation system connected to the ship computer. The sonar equipment is in form of a hydrographic side-scanning echograph which radiates probing pulses and receives signals reflected from the bottom surface, whose intensity is continuously recorded, parallactic shift between corresponding records of images of the bottom topography of the water body on echograms of two loggers and their geodetic coordinates are determined and stereo maps of the bottom topography of the water body are constructed based on the obtained data. A digital map of the bottom relief of the water body is first formed based on archival data. Antennae of the sonar equipment are placed in the vertical plane, each on board of the hydrographic ship. The obtained discrete measurements are used to construct a digital map of the bottom relief; Topographic analysis of the topography is carried out to plot a Kronrod-Rib graph and Morse-Smale complexes for each piecewise linear surface and fractal parametres of the topography are estimated. The apparatus has two receive-transmit antennae, two electromechanical recorders, a plotting device, a unit for determining parallactic shift between corresponding records of images of the topography on loggers of the electromechanical recorders, a stereo map of the bottom topography of the water body and data-connected to the ship computer; the apparatus further includes a functional unit, an inertial measurement module connected to the receiver-indicator of the satellite navigation system and an electronic cartographic navigation system.

EFFECT: high accuracy of reconstructing bottom topography during stereophotography of a microtopography using sonar equipment.

2 cl, 6 dwg