Single-hydrophone bearing estimation for long-range underwater navigation.

Abstract

Beacon acoustic sources can aid long-range underwater navigation since using an inertial navigation system alone becomes inaccurate over long duration. Here, estimates of the relative position of a single hydrophone mounted on a small underwater platform are used only while recording a 2-min-long low-frequency (200-300 Hz) transmission from a beacon source located at depth ∼1100 m and ranges up to ∼148 km in the vicinity of two seamounts. Accounting for the hydrophone motion in the matched-filtering process during the source transmission allows to estimate the bearing of this single beacon source for navigation purposes despite environmental complexity.