Precision attitude measurements for survey vessels

Accurate measurement of a vessel´s attitude angles is necessary for certain types of instrumentation, in particular multibeam echo sounders and underwater positioning of the supershort baseline type. While inertial navigation platforms have the required accuracy, the cost of such units is prohibitively high for the majority of users. The authors investigate a different approach which may be more cost effective, by combining new interferometric GPS systems with a conventional compass an pitch/roll sensors. A Kalman type of filter is used for the combination