Analysis and implementation of cross sync period underwater acoustical positioning techniques for underwater targets

I.IlltroductionWhenanactiveunderwateracousticalpositioningsystemissearchingforanunderwatertarget,itisnecessaryforittocompleteatransmittingandreceivingcycIewithineachworkingperiodinordertofindoutthelocationofthetargetcorrectly.Forexample,whenanunder-wateracoustica1synchronouspositioningsystemistrackinganunderwatertargetwithagivensynchr0nizingperiod,thepropagati0ntimeofthepositioningsignaltravellingfr0mthetaJrgettothearrayofthesystemshouldbelessthanthesynchronizingperiod0therwisetargetdis-tance…

Analysis and implementation of cross sync period underwater acoustical positioning techniques for underwater targets

The sampling rate of an underwater acoustical synchronous positioning system for the track of an underwater target will be decreasing during the process of positioning while the target moves away, resulting in the reduction of raw data and insufficient use of the processing ability of the positioning system. For a long time, this problem has remained unsolved, and it is even pushed forward recently because of the rapid development of modern electronic tech- niques. Based on the thorough study and investigation of the problem, we developed a new synchronous positioning technique called "Cross Sync Period" underwater acoustical positioning. It can increase the sampling rate of an underwater acoustical positioning system for the track of an underwater target at long range significantly Besides, a new algorithm specially designed for the detection of the propagation time delay of the positioning signals called "Mod-ulo Algorithm" was also developed, which makes the implementation of the "cross sync period"underwater acoustical positioning technique easier and more efficient. These techniques have been successfully applied in a real positioning system. The system can position 5 underwater targets at the maximum range of 6 km simultaneously without any ambiguity of target distances with the working period of 0.4 s. The "cross sync period" underwater acoustical positioning technique applied in the system was performed in lake and searun tests, and satisfactory re-sults were obtained.