Abstract This paper presents an automatic, rigorous, and robust method to determine a Multi-Beam Echo Sounder (MBES) and Inertial Measurement Unit/Inertial Navigation System (IMU/INS) latency calibration. The latency may be due to the IMU/INS itself, but also to the time-tagging configuration, which is generally left to the survey systems user. One survey strip over a flat seafloor is the required configuration of line for using this approach, called Multibeam IMU/INS Latency Automatic Calibration (MILAC), standing for MBES to IMU/INS Latency Automatic Calibration. The algorithm considers only data with maximum latency effects and integrates an automatic data selection for this purpose. The latency estimation procedure is based on an iterative Least Square adjustment method followed by a statistical analysis. Our process can deal with beam acoustic refraction caused by the speed of sound in sea water. The accuracy of MILAC is about 2 ms (millisecond) and its average precision of 0.15 ms. MILAC is able to determine the latency with an average resolution of 5 ms. However, the morphology of the survey line is restricted to smooth and regular seafloor and the survey platform should have a relatively high attitude rate.

中文翻译：

---

多波束回声测深仪 – INS 自动延迟校准

摘要 本文提出了一种自动、严格和稳健的方法来确定多波束回声测深仪 (MBES) 和惯性测量单元/惯性导航系统 (IMU/INS) 延迟校准。延迟可能是由于 IMU/INS 本身，也可能是由于时间标记配置，这通常留给测量系统用户。在平坦海底上的一个测量带是使用这种方法所需的线路配置，称为多波束 IMU/INS 延迟自动校准 (MILAC)，代表 MBES 到 IMU/INS 延迟自动校准。该算法仅考虑具有最大延迟影响的数据，并为此集成了自动数据选择。延迟估计过程基于迭代最小二乘调整方法，然后是统计分析。我们的过程可以处理由海水中的声速引起的波束声折射。MILAC 的精度约为 2 ms（毫秒），平均精度为 0.15 ms。MILAC 能够以 5 毫秒的平均分辨率确定延迟。然而，测线的形态仅限于平滑且规则的海底，测线平台应具有较高的姿态率。