Robust Estimations of Current Velocities with Four-Beam Broadband ADCPs

An extended explanation of the hypothesis and equations traditionally used to transform between four-beam ADCP radial beam velocities and current velocity components is presented. This explanation includes a dissertation about the meaning of the RD Instrument error velocity and a description of the standard beam-to-current components transformation as a least squares solution. Afterward, the variance–covariance matrix associated with the least squares solution is found. Then, a robust solution for transforming radial beam velocities into current components is derived under the formality of a weighted least squares approach. The associated variance–covariance matrix is also formulated and theoretically proves that the modulus of its elements will be generally lower than the corresponding modulus of the variance–covariance matrix associated with the standard least squares solution. Finally, a comparison between the results obtained using the standard least squares solution and the results of the weighted least squares method, using a high-resolution ADCP dataset, is presented. The results show that, in this case, the weighted least squares solution provides variance estimations that are 4% lower over the entire record period (8 days) and 7% lower during a shorter, more energetic period (12 h).