A method and a system for measuring the velocity of a vessel relative to
the bottom using a velocity measuring correlation sonar are disclosed.
The present invention provides a new theoretical expression for the
bottom medium sonar array temporal and spatial correlation function. The
velocity of the vessel relative to the bottom is derived by fitting
experimental data to a theoretical function. The bottom medium sonar
array temporal and spatial correlation function of the present invention
is succinctly expressed in zero-rank Bessel function, and well coincided
with experiments. The function is applicable not only to far field
region, i.e. planar wave region, but also to Fraunhofer region, i.e.
spherical wave region. Transmit transducers and receive transducers are
multistatic in the velocity measuring correlation sonar of the present
invention, so the transmit beam width and the receive beam width can be
selected reasonably. The present invention is applicable to measuring the
velocity of the vessel relative to the bottom with high measurement
accuracy, small calculation load, good robustness and fast convergence.