Method of establishing an underwater digital elevation terrain based on kriging interpolation

•An improved method of establishing DEM is introduced.•Interpolation data are selected based on the terrain roughness degree.•Kriging interpolation method is improved by modified weights and cross validation.•In undulating regions, optimization of inner angle standard deviation shows better.

A high-precision underwater digital elevation model (DEM) is the premise of terrain-aided navigation. This study introduces the establishment of such a model. The process includes the construction and optimization of a triangular irregular network, selection of interpolation data based on terrain roughness degree, kriging interpolation, and error corrections. Results show that the established interpolation data selection method based on terrain roughness degree is better than other traditional interpolation methods in terms of accuracy. The proposed kriging interpolation method and error corrections exhibit excellent performance.