Title
Surface sensor networks for Underwater Vehicle positioning with bearings-only measurements
Abstract
There is increasing interest in the use of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) to substantially improve the means available for ocean exploration and exploitation. A key element in the operation of certain classes of AUVs is the availability of good underwater positioning systems to localize one or more vehicles simultaneously based on information received on-board a support ship or a set of autonomous surface vehicles. In an interesting operational scenario, the set of autonomous surface vehicles carries a network of acoustic units that measure the elevation and azimuth angles between the target and each of the receivers. Motivated by these considerations, in this paper we address the problem of determining the optimal geometric configuration of an acoustic sensor network at the ocean surface that will maximize the angle-related information available for underwater target positioning. It is assumed that the angle measurements are corrupted by white Gaussian noise, the variance of which is distance-dependent. Using the Cramer-Rao lower bound inequality, the trace of the inverse of the Fisher Information matrix (also called the Cramer-Rao Bound matrix) for the problem at hand is used to determine the sensor configuration that yields the minimum possible covariance of any unbiased target estimator. It is shown that the optimal configuration lends itself to an interesting geometrical interpretation and that the spreading of the sensor configuration depends explicitly on the intensity of the measurement noise and the target depth. Simulation examples illustrate the key results derived.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1109/IROS.2012.6385616
Intelligent Robots and Systems
Keywords
Field
DocType
Gaussian noise,acoustic transducers,angular measurement,autonomous underwater vehicles,covariance analysis,geometry,matrix algebra,mobile robots,noise measurement,oceanography,position control,ships,underwater sound,white noise,AUV,Cramer-Rao bound matrix,Cramer-Rao lower bound inequality,Fisher information matrix,acoustic sensor network,acoustic units,angle measurement,autonomous surface vehicle,autonomous underwater vehicle,azimuth angle,bearings-only measurement,covariance,elevation angle,geometrical interpretation,measurement noise intensity,ocean exploitation,ocean exploration,ocean surface,optimal geometric configuration,sensor configuration,support ship,surface sensor network,underwater target positioning,underwater vehicle positioning system,vehicle localization,white Gaussian noise
Noise measurement,Computer science,Control theory,Upper and lower bounds,White noise,Control engineering,Fisher information,Acoustics,Additive white Gaussian noise,Gaussian noise,Wireless sensor network,Underwater
Conference
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
2153-0858
978-1-4673-1737-5
2
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.48
8
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
David Moreno-Salinas1495.51
António M. Pascoal219423.65
J. Aranda3563.78