Dynamic placement of a constellation of surface buoys for enhanced underwater positioning

This paper addresses the challenge of dynamically adapting the location of the nodes in an acoustic network to optimise the localisation performance of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) operating in the area. A dynamic placement algorithm is presented to minimise the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound associated to the connected subset of network nodes. Algorithm performance is shown in simulation and as obtained during the REP14-Atlantic sea trial. REP14-Atlantic took place in July 2014 in front of the coast of Sesimbra, Portugal, and deployed a network composed of four nodes: one AUV of Folaga class, one fixed buoy, and two Wavegliders.