Short-Baseline Acoustic Tracking with Autonomous Surface Vehicles

This paper investigates the use of commercial modems mounted in a short-baseline (SBL) configuration on an autonomous surface craft (ASC) for tracking other marine vehicles. We have developed a method for tracking an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) from an ASC using one-way range measurements provided by standard Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) modems. The method does not require transmission of detailed navigation information, but rather uses short ranging packets, which can be transmitted at a much higher rate than standard data packets. We present tracking results for the system in a shallow water environment using two autonomous vehicles. The results indicate that the system is capable of tracking an AUV given initial baseline information and modest knowledge of the vehicle's mobility.