NAVIGATION SYSTEM FOR TOWED UNDERWATER VEHICLE Russian patent published in 2014 - IPC G01S5/00 

FIELD: radio engineering, communication.

SUBSTANCE: navigation system for a towed underwater vehicle comprises, installed on a towing vessel, a GPS receiver, a control system, multibeam echo sounder, a shipborne sonar unit, an underwater navigation antenna and, installed on the towed underwater vehicle, side-scanning sonar, a control device and an underwater navigation transponder. Coordinates of the towed underwater vehicle relative to the position of the antenna of the GPS receiver on the towing vessel are determined by phase-based direction-finding. The control system then corrects coordinates of the towed underwater vehicle via cross-correlation processing of images of the bottom topography obtained using the side-scanning sonar and the multibeam echo sounder. The corrected coordinates of the towed underwater vehicle are converted to geographic coordinates.

EFFECT: reducing errors in determining coordinates of a towed underwater vehicle while simultaneously reducing labour costs when conducting underwater exploration.

5 dwg