Automatic error detection in MBES Surveys

The use of multibeam echosounders (MBES) requires proper calibration of the mounted system. To acheive this goal, the misalignment and the latency between the MBES and the inertial navigation system (INS) as well as the lever arm between the GNSS antenna phase center and the MBES acoustic center must all be determined. CIDCO along with partners (SHOM, ENSTA Bretagne) developped the MSPAC solution, which provides an automatic estimation of these paramaters, has recently been open sourced and is available to the community. We give a brief description of MSPAC's estimators and a georeferenced path planning algorithm to obtain the required data. Furthermore, in order to acheive accurate sound ray tracing, it is crucial to have knowledge of the sound speed profile in the water column. An automated estimator of the average relative error in the sound speed profile is presented.