Improving Precision in the Reference Velocity of ADCP Measurements Using a Kalman Filter with GPS and Bottom Track

Global positioning system (GPS) data are used to measure boat velocity during acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) discharge measurements, particularly when bottom tracking (BT) is biased by moving bed. A Kalman filter is developed to improve the velocity reference used by the ADCP under such conditions. Kalman filtering is a recursive statistical technique that estimates the current state of a process, given various inputs and their variance. In the case of data obtained by ADCP, the availability of two independent velocity measurements and a position measurement makes this method particularly attractive. The new Kalman filter combines raw inputs for GPS position (GGA) and Doppler velocity (VTG) with BT data in real time to produce best estimates of velocity. The technique is evaluated and calibrated using various accuracies of GPS data collected simultaneously along with unbiased BT data at two different sites. On the Gatineau River, real-time kinematic and wide area augmentation system corrections were used for this study. On the Saint Mary’s River, nondifferential GPS was collected. To examine the conditions under which such a system would be required, synthetic data for a moving bed contamination of BT were created. In all moving bed conditions evaluated, the Kalman filter estimates of reference velocity were superior to raw inputs.