A study of inverse SSBL acoustic positioning with data transmission for multiple AUV navigation

In this paper, an acoustic navigation for autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), inverse super short baseline (ISSBL) with data transmission, is introduced. A receiver array is equipped on the AUV. Acoustic signal is transmitted from mother ship and received by the receiver array on the AUV. Then relative position of the AUV to the mother ship is calculated on the AUV. Absolute position of the mother ship by global positioning system (GPS) is included in the acoustic signal. The ship´s position data is demodulated on the AUV and the absolute position of AUV is calculated. This method has some advantageous point for multiple AUV operation. Accuracy estimation by simulation was performed under an assumption of actual design. Furthermore, a simulation of AUV navigation by this method was performed. The accuracy could be similar order to recent SSBL system. It was found that this navigational method is applicable as an actual system.