GPS applications in sonobuoys

Airborne submarine warfare (ASW) relies extensively on acoustic sonobuoys to locate targets. Presently the only means of locating these buoys after deployment is a very crude radiolocation technique using the buoy VHF transmitter, and involves undesirable delays. GPS has been proposed as a means of broadcasting buoy position back to the aircraft. Conventional GPS receivers in standalone mode cannot provide adequate accuracy, have relatively slow acquisition times and are still too expensive for a disposable application. This paper summarises an innovative GPS sensor to address these problems. The sensor, the TIDGET, also lends itself to other similar applications such as weather balloon (radiosonde) location, marine buoy positioning, towed-array tailbuoy positioning etc