Faster Calculating the Incidence Angles of Multibeam Echosounders With Transmit and Receive Cones Intersection

For faster and more accurate acquisition of the spatial incidence angle of multibeam echosounders (MBESs), a better algorithm called “Cross” is proposed in this article, where the spatial incidence angle can be calculated by solving the simultaneous equations of the transmit and receive cone equations. In the algorithm, the two cone equations for the transmit and receive sectors are established using 14 known angles. Then, the intersection vector of both cones at the same apex can be calculated very quickly from the simultaneous equations of transmit and receive sectors, and the spatial incidence angle and relative azimuth of each beam can also be obtained from them. Comparing with other algorithms, calculating the spatial incidence angle is a generic method regardless of shallow or deep water. Furthermore, the “Cross” algorithm achieves a similar internal precision and about 12.3%–13.4% speedup than “UNB. ” The effectiveness and practicability of the proposed algorithm are verified through the experiments of various instrument models and file formats.