Acoustic Theory Application in Ultra Short Baseline System for Tracking AUV

Abstract

The effective tracking area of ultra short baseline (USBL) systems strongly relates to the safety of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). This problem has not been studied previously. A method for determining the effective tracking area using acoustic theory is proposed. Ray acoustic equations are used to draw rays, which ascertain the effective space. The sonar equation is established in order to discover the available range of the USBL system and the background noise level using sonar characteristics. The available range defines a hemisphere like enclosure. The overlap of the effective space with the hemisphere is the effective area for USBL systems tracking AUVs. Lake and sea trials show the proposed method's validity.

Keywords:

• Ultra short baseline system
• track
• AUV
• ray equations
• sonar equations

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by both grants from the natural science foundation of Liaoning Province of China for the “Convergence mechanism of single beacon navigation of underwater robot” project (No. 20102236) and Natural High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 program) (No. 2012AA091401-2).