Underwater localization by combining Time-of-Flight and Direction-of-Arrival

• Main Authors: van Kleunen, Wouter A. P., Blom, Koen C. H., Meratnia, Nirvana, Kokkeler, Andre B. J., Havinga, Paul J. M., Smit, Gerard J. M.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: acoustic ranging; Acoustics; Clocks; Direction-of-arrival estimation; Distance measurement; Measurement uncertainty; phased arrays; Synchronization; Transducers; underwater localization
• DOI: 10.1109/OCEANS-TAIPEI.2014.6964309

In this paper we present a combined Time-of-Flight (ToF) and Direction-of-Arrival (DoA) localization approach suitable for shallow underwater monitoring applications such as harbor monitoring. Our localization approach combines one-way ranging and DoA estimation to calculate both position and time-synchronization of the blind-node. We will show that using this localization approach, we are able to reduce the number of reference nodes required to perform localization. By combining ToF and DoA, our approach is also capable of tracking and positioning of sound sources under water. We evaluate our approach through both simulation and underwater experiments in a ten meter deep dive-center (which has many similarities with our target application in terms of depth and reflection). Measurements taken at the dive-center show that this environment is highly reflective and resembles a shallow water harbor environment. Positioning results using the measured Time-of-Arrival (ToA) and DoA indicate that the DoA approach outperforms the ToF approach in our setup. Investigation of the DoA and ToF measurement error distributions, however, indicate the ToF-based localization approach has a higher precision. Shown is that both ToF and DoA and the combined approach achieve sub-meter positional accuracy in the test environment. Using the error distributions derived from the measurement in the dive-center, we run simulations of the same setup. Results from the simulation indicate ToF is more accurate than DoA positioning. Also in simulation all approaches achieve sub-meter accuracy.