Mapping under Bridges

State-of-the-art Hydrographic Equipment including the Apogee-E

DVL input in the Apogee-E is a big advantage. It helps for real-time GNSS outages, especially under bridges.

Alexander Schmidt, Technical Sales Manager at MBT, MaCartney

State-of-the-art Equipment for WSA Berlin

The vessel «Spreegrund», property of WSA Berlin, has been equipped by MacArtney Germany, with state-of- the-art equipment including the Apogee-E, the highest accuracy inertial navigation system from SBG.

The catamaran survey vessel named «Spreegrund» serves as survey vessel on German lakes, adjacent canals, and rivers (Berlin, Brandenburg, Eberswalde, and Lauenburg). It carries out complete surveys at speeds of up to 6 knots and water depths down to 20 meters.

State-of-the-art Hydrographic Equipment

The onboard equipment features:

  • the first Teledyne RESON T20-P TripleHead multibeam echo sounder
  • a Teledyne ODOM CV 100 single beam echo sounder,
  • a Teledyne RDI Navigator DVL
  • a Valeport SWiFT as well as a Valeport Ultra SV sound velocity sensor
  • the data acquisition software QINSy
  • and the SBG Apogee-E inertial navigation system supplied by MacArtney Germany together with two ObeLx-R GNSS heading receivers (Septentrio boards inside). The onboard control system and software work to ensure optimal data acquisition from the survey sensor suite. It is capable of handling enormous data stream of up to 25,000 soundings per second.

Charting under bridges with the Apogee INS

Surveying under bridges is a challenging application that fully requires the fusion between inertial and GNSS data. Indeed, GNSS receivers are perturbed when vessels are crossing bridges and may cause outages or incorrect data.

In the case of WSA Berlin, this is a day-to-day challenge, explaining why MacArtney chose an Apogee-E inertial navigation system connected with their own Dual-antenna GNSS receiver (Septentrio inside). “We needed the highest accuracy INS to maintain the very high precision of the overall equipment,” states Alexander Schmidt from MacArtney Germany.

Charting under bridges with the Apogee INS

Google Map Image

Overlapling: 95% Confidence

Seafloor

We obtained excellent results with the Apogee-E, the images speak for themselves.

Alexander Schmidt from McArtney, Germany

Combination of Inertial, GNSS, and DVL data

The Apogee-E is the only INS of its category to fuse in real-time inertial data with and external DVL and two GNSS receivers. Data are fused to generate outputs to the echo-sounder computer for motion compensation and georeferencing.

When GNSS outages occur, the Apogee-E is able to maintain the position in real-time. Its performance is even better when aided by a DVL. The INS integrates velocity data to the internal algorithm to reduce the inner drift of the IMU.

“We obtained excellent results with the Apogee-E, the images speak for themselves” to conclude Alexander Schmidt, Technical Sales Manager at MacArtney Germany.

Apogee-E

+ Navigation with External GNSS

  • 0.008° Roll & Pitch (RTK)
  • 0.015° GNSS-based Heading (4m baseline)
  • 1 cm Position (Depends on the GNSS receiver)
  • Post-processing with Qinertia PPK Software
  • 5 cm Real-time Heave, 2 cm Delayed Heave
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