Depth gate tracking method based on historical sounding results in MBES

Abstract

Gate tracking technology plays a crucial role in the autonomous detection of multi-beam echo sounding. The quality of the tracking algorithm directly impacts the quality of the estimate data. Here, we propose a new method for depth gate tracking in multi-beam echo sounding based on the assumption that historical sounding results are geometrically similar to the current ping results. Considering Hausdorff distance measures how far two subsets of a metric space are from each other. An evaluation method based on the concept of similarity distance that relies on the Modified Hausdorff distance is proposed here to measure the similarity between the detection results of different pings and determine the maximum number of historical pings that can be tracked. Then, this model is combined with the iterative closest point registration algorithm to align the bathymetric results of historical pings to the current ping, eliminating the need for prior registration. The registered data are used to initialize the particle distribution in the tracking particle filter and a distance-weighted importance function is established for each beam. Validation on measured data has shown that the proposed method is effective in tracking seabed topography and providing stable gate tracking results.