The Self Calibrating Acoustic Transponder (SCAT) System

This paper describes a self-calibration technique for long baseline navigation that eliminates the requirement of the ship maneuvering throughout the transponder array. This new method requires only two special transponders which can be deployed in addition or in conjunction with a normal array of deep ocean transponders (DOT's). The self calibration technique requires only three acoustic data cycles to perform a relative calibration of an array independent of the number of transponders. The paper describes the calibration problem and the parameters that are required to be measured. It also gives a description of the actual transponders and the different commands required to collect the data from the transponder. The algorithm will be discussed and some conclusions will be presented.