Can We Increase the Update Rate of the Underwater Acoustic Positioning System?

Abstract

The update rate of the underwater acoustic positioning system (UAPS) is bounded by the inverse of the sum of the ping-response packet duration and the round-trip time (RTT). In a long-range localization such as the environment of the lower Antarctic ice shelf (antsubice), the update rate is severely limited by the large RTT due to the slow propagation speed of sound waves. In this paper, we propose a positioning method to overcome the update rate limitations of the conventional UAPS. We provide an ideal example that achieves the upper bound of the update rate, defined as the inverse of the ping-response packet duration, which are not dependent on RTT. In addition, we present a practical solution that follows the principle of this ideal example.