• Proceedings of the Korea Committee for Ocean Resources and Engineering Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.204-209
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• 2004

It is well known fact that acoustic positioning systems are absolutely needed for various underwater operations. According to the distances between their sensors they are classified into three parts: long baseline(LBL), short baseline(SBL), and ultra-short baseline(USBL). Among them the USBL system is widely used because of its simplicity, although it is the most inaccurate. Recently, in order to increase the positioning accuracy, various USBL systems using broadband signal such as MFSK(Multiple Frequency Shift Keying) are produced. However, their positioning accuracy is still limited by background noise and reflected waves. Therefore, there is difficulty in applying the USBL system using MFSK signal in a shallow water with noisy conditions. In order to examine the effect of the noise and wave reflections this paper analyze position errors for various conditions using numerical simulations. The simulation results say that tile SNR must be greater than 20dB and errors in the vertical direction are slightly increased by wave reflections by upper and lower boundaries.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.71-77
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• 2013

The effective tracking area of ultra short baseline (USBL) systems strongly relates to the safety of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). This problem has not been studied previously. A method for determining the effective tracking area using acoustic theory is proposed. Ray acoustic equations are used to draw rays which ascertain the effective space. The sonar equation is established in order to discover the available range of the USBL system and the background noise level using sonar characteristics. The available range defines a hemisphere like enclosure. The overlap of the effective space with the hemisphere is the effective area for USBL systems tracking AUVs. Lake and sea trials show the proposed method's validity.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.89-94
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• 2024

Since Ultra-Short BaseLine (USBL) uses an array with narrow sensor spacing, precise synchronization is required to improve source localization performances. However, in the underwater environment, synchronization errors occur due to relatively strong noise and underwater acoustic channels such as multipath and Doppler, which deteriorates the source localization performances. This paper proposes a covariance-based synchronization compensation method to improve the source localization performances of the underwater USBL systems. The proposed method arranges the received signals through cross-correlation and calculates the covariance of the arranged signals. The synchronization error is related to the phase difference in the covariance. Thus, the phase difference is estimated as the covariance and compensated. Computer simulations demonstrate that the proposed method has better source localization performances than the conventional cross-correlation method.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.340-352
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• 2022

This article presents a modeling method for the uncorrelated measurement error of the ultra-short baseline (USBL) acoustic positioning system for aiding navigation of underwater vehicles. The Mahalanobis distance (MD) and principal component analysis are applied to decorrelate the errors of USBL measurements, which are correlated in the x- and y-directions and vary according to the relative direction and distance between a reference station and the underwater vehicles. The proposed method can decouple the radial-direction error and angular direction error from each USBL measurement, where the former and latter are independent and dependent, respectively, of the distance between the reference station and the vehicle. With the decorrelation of the USBL errors along the trajectory of the vehicles in every time step, the proposed method can reduce the threshold of the outlier decision level. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, simulation studies were performed with motion data obtained from a field experiment involving an autonomous underwater vehicle and USBL signals generated numerically by matching the specifications of a specific USBL with the data of a global positioning system. The simulations indicated that the navigation system is more robust in rejecting outliers of the USBL measurements than conventional ones. In addition, it was shown that the erroneous estimation of the navigation system after a long USBL blackout can converge to the true states using the MD of the USBL measurements. The navigation systems using the uncorrelated error model of the USBL, therefore, can effectively eliminate USBL outliers without loss of uncontaminated signals.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.335-339
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• 2005

The underwater positioning system is important in interpreting data that are acquired from towing vehicles such as the deep-sea camera (DSC) system. Currently, several acoustic positioning systems such as long baseline (LBL), short baseline (SBL), and ultra short baseline (USBL), are used for underwater positioning. The accurate position of DSC, however, could not be determined in a R/V Onnuri unequipped with any of these underwater positioning systems. As an alternative, the DSC position was estimated based on the topography of towing track and cable length in the cruises before 1999. The great uncertainties, however, were found in the areas of flat bottom topography. In the 2003 and 2004 cruises these uncertainties were reduced by calculating the position of DSC with the cable length and seafloor depth below the vessel. The Japanese cruises for Mn-nodule used a similar estimation method for the DSC positioning system with a CTD sensor. Although the latter can provide better information for the position of DSC, the USBL underwater positioning system is strongly recommended for establishing better positioning of DSC and other towing devices.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.315-323
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• 2017

This paper presents an integrated navigation system that combines ultra-short baseline (USBL), Doppler velocity log (DVL), and heading measurements for a deep-sea remotely operated vehicle, Hemire. A navigation model is introduced based on the kinematic relation of the position and velocity. The system states are predicted using the navigation model and corrected with the USBL, DVL, and heading measurements using the Kalman filter. The performance of the navigation system was confirmed through re-navigation simulations with the measured data at the Southern Mariana Arc submarine volcanoes. Based on the characteristics of the measurements, the design process for the parameters of the system modeling error covariance, measurement error covariance, and initial error covariance are presented. This paper reviews the influence of the outliers and blackout of the USBL and DVL measurements, and proposes an outlier rejection algorithm that is robust to USBL blackout. The effectiveness of the method is demonstrated with re-navigation for the data that includes USBL blackouts.

• Proceedings of the Korea Committee for Ocean Resources and Engineering Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.27-31
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• 2003

Underwater acoustic navigation systems are classified into three systems: ultra-short baseline (USBL), short baseline (SBL), and long baseline (LBL). Because the USBL system estimates the angle of a submersible, the estimation error becomes large if the submersible is far from the USBL transducer array mounted under a support vessel. SBL and LBL systems estimate submersible's location more accurately because they have wider distribution of measuring sensors. Especially LBL systems are widely used as a navigation system for deep ocean applications. Although it is most accurate system it still has estimation errors because of noise, measurement error, refraction and multi-path of acoustic signal, or wrong information of the distributed transponders. In this paper the estimation error of the LBL system are analyzed from a point of sensitivity. It is assumed that the error exists only in the distance between a submersible and the transponders. For this purpose sensitivity of the estimated position with respect to relative distances between them is analyzed. The result says that estimation error is small if the submersible is close to transponders but not near the ocean bottom.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.115-123
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• 2024

USBL systems are essential for providing accurate positions of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). On the other hand, the accuracy can be degraded by outliers because of the environmental conditions. A failure to address these outliers can significantly impact the reliability of underwater localization and navigation systems. This paper proposes a novel outlier rejection algorithm for AUV localization using Voronoi diagrams and query point calculation. The Voronoi diagram divides data space into Voronoi cells that center on ultra-short baseline (USBL) data, and the calculated query point determines if the corresponding USBL data is an inlier. This study conducted experiments acquiring GPS and USBL data simultaneously and optimized the algorithm empirically based on the acquired data. In addition, the proposed method was applied to a sensor fusion algorithm to verify its effectiveness, resulting in improved pose estimations. The proposed method can be applied to various sensor fusion algorithms as a preprocess and could be used for outlier rejection for other 2D-based location sensors.

• Proceedings of the Korea Committee for Ocean Resources and Engineering Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.249-256
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• 2004

KRISO/KORDI is currently developing a deep-sea unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) system which is composed of a launcher, an ROV, and an AUV. Two USBL acoustic positioning systems will be used for UUV's navigation. One is for the deep sea positioning of all three vehicles and the other is for AUV's guidance to the docking device on the launcher. In order to increase the position accuracy MFSK(Multiple Frequency Shift Keying) broadband signal will be used. As the first step to the implementation of a USBL system, this paper studies USBL positioning algorithm using MFSK signals. Firstly, the characteristics of MFSK signal is described with various MFSK parameters: number of frequencies, frequency step, center frequency, and pulse length. Time and phase delays between two received signals are estimated by using cross-correlation and cross-spectrum methods. Finally an USBL positioning algorithm is derived by converting the delays to difference of distances and applying trigonometry. The simulation results show that the position accuracy is improved highly when both cross-correlation and cross-spectrum of MFSK signals are used simultaneously.

• International Journal of Ocean System Engineering
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.60-67
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• 2011

This paper presents an in-situ correction method to compensate for the position error of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) near the sea floor. AUVs generally have an inertial navigation system assisted with auxiliary navigational sensors. Since the inertial navigation system shows drift in position without the bottom reflection of a Doppler velocity log, external acoustic positioning systems, such as an ultra short baseline (USBL), are needed to set the position without surfacing the AUV. The main concept of the correction method is as follows: when the AUV arrives near the sea floor, the vehicle moves around horizontally in a circular mode, while the USBL transceiver installed on a surface vessel measures the AUV's position. After acquiring one data set, a least-square curve fitting method is adopted to find the center of the AUV's circular motion, which is transferred to the AUV via an acoustic telemetry modem (ATM). The proposed method is robust for the outlier of USBL, and it is independent of the time delay for the data transfer of the USBL position with the ATM. The proposed method also reduces the intrinsic position error of the USBL, and is applicable to the in-situ calibration as well as the initialization of the AUVs' position. Monte Carlo simulation was conducted to verify the effectiveness of the method.