Positioning of Marine Surveys With an Integrated Satellite Navigation System*

Abstract

For almost two years, satellite navigation has been used in reconnaissance exploration. However, only in the last six months has it been demonstrated that an “integrated” system provides navigational accuracy for all geophysical prospecting. This paper describes the accuracy of the integrated system and illustrates its merits. The primary objective of the integrated system is to provide continuous, accurate, geodetic position information. This is accomplished by integrating instantaneous position, velocity and heading from outputs of the Doppler sonar, gyrocompass, velocimeter, vertical references with periodic updates obtained from the Navy Navigation Satellite System. Each of the subsystems, their operations and functions will be discussed. Satellite navigation offers many advantages for marine surveys. Features for point‐to‐point automatic steering, onboard plotting of shotpoint data, firing of seismic energy source as a function of exact distance and real‐time data logging onto digital tape have been implemented. With the onboard computer all navigation, gravity and magnetic information is recorded on tape and some preprocessing and filtering of gravity and magnetic data may be accomplished.