Comparison of independently-moving transponder configurations for AUV fleet navigation with one-way acoustic ranging

This paper presents two alternatives for improving moving short-baseline (MSBL) navigation for a fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). The alternatives include the addition of one or two moving surface vessels with transponder(s) to either augment or replace short-baseline transponders on an objective ship. In the proposed configurations, the additional moving transponders act as surface communication and navigation aids (CNAs). Broadcasts of CNA states also provide one-way-travel-time (OWTT) from which ranges are calculated. These broadcast states, OWTT ranges, and onboard sensors are fused in an extended Kalman filter to estimate the state of both the AUV and CNAs. Monte Carlo simulation and cost-function minimization methods are used to find the most advantageous transponder geometries. Based on the results, the use of the CNAs may resolve navigation problems experienced in previous work. To improve confidence in our evaluation of the alternatives, the simulations used physical parameters, control characteristics, and noise levels based on knowledge gleaned from previous experimental work.