METHOD OF DETERMINING SOUND SPEED Russian patent published in 2014 - IPC G01H5/00 

FIELD: physics.

SUBSTANCE: method involves omnidirectional emission of a probing signal towards the bottom; receiving the reflected signal using a static beam pattern fan; measuring sound speed at the depth of emission thereof; receiving the signal reflected from the bottom with two partial beam patterns at angles less than 40 degrees from the normal, and axes of thereof are spaced by angles of the order of 2 degrees; measuring the directional angles of the selected partial beam patterns; measuring the time of arrival of signals reflected from the bottom; in the selected partial beam patterns, determining the ratio of propagation time of received signals; performing successive selection of possible values of sound speed at the depth at the bottom in the range of 30% of the sound speed measured at the emission depth with a step of 0.5 m/s; the value which provides the minimum difference is taken as the estimate of the sound speed at the depth.

EFFECT: high accuracy of measuring depth using a multi-beam echo sounder.

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