Synthetic baseline navigation using phase-coherent acoustic communication signals

Eric Gallimore; Mark Anderson; Lee Freitag; Eric Terrill

doi:10.1121/1.5137902

Synthetic baseline navigation using phase-coherent acoustic communication signals

J Acoust Soc Am. 2019 Dec;146(6):4831. doi: 10.1121/1.5137902.

Authors

Eric Gallimore¹, Mark Anderson², Lee Freitag³, Eric Terrill¹

Affiliations

¹ Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California 92093, USA.
² Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California 92093, USA.
³ Department of Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 266 Woods Hole Road, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543, USA.

PMID: 31893755
DOI: 10.1121/1.5137902

Abstract

The development of a synthetic baseline navigation technique that self-localizes an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) using intermittent acoustic communications signals received by a single transducer is described, along with field results from in-ocean tests. The method uses the phase measurement at the output of a second-order phase-locked loop to create fine-scale pseudorange estimates in addition to, or in the absence of, a one-way travel time measurement based on the arrival time of the acoustic data packet. These range measurements are incorporated by an adaptive particle filter. This technique allows the vehicle navigation system to take advantage of multiple phase-derived range measurements made over the duration of a communication packet. These measurements, when incorporated with an appropriate filter and vehicle kinematic model, improve vehicle navigation at no additional cost in navigation-specific acoustic transmissions. This approach was demonstrated and evaluated with data collected at-sea using a REMUS 100 AUV (Hydroid, Inc., Pocasset, MA).