Optimization of computation efficiency in underwater acoustic navigation system

This paper presents a technique for the estimation of the relative bearing angle between the unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) and the base station for the homing and docking operations. The key requirement of this project includes computation efficiency and estimation accuracy for direct implementation onto the UUV electronic hardware, subject to the extreme constraints of physical limitation of the hardware due to the size and dimension of the UUV housing, electric power consumption for the requirement of UUV survey duration and range coverage, and heat dissipation of the hardware. Subsequent to the design and development of the algorithm, two phases of experiments were conducted to illustrate the feasibility and capability of this technique. The presentation of this paper includes system modeling, mathematical analysis, and results from laboratory experiments and full-scale sea tests.