RSSI-based energy efficient underwater localization technique for AUVs

Delay-sensitive critical maritime applications like autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) detection and tracking are realistically improbable using underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) relying on sound waves at 1500 m/sec. When it comes to delay-sensitive and high-data-rate applications, electromagnetic-based UWSNs (EUWSN) are reliable in terms of localization and tracking accuracy. Faster propagation speed of 3*10⁸ m/sec enables EM-based networks to perform tasks including immediate tracking and counter-measuring in hostile underwater environments. Additionally, EUWSNs can operate outside of a line of sight (LoS). In this paper, we proposed an RSSI-based localization technique to estimate an AUV position by deploying EUWSN. We integrate RSSI with velocity estimation vp over time that is further based on temperature (T) and salinity (S)data at multiple lat/long and ocean depths across multiple oceans. In simulations, we estimate the overall impact of our scheme on network performance in terms of network lifetime and packet received, along with the 3D trajectory of AUV. We compare our proposed method with ToA and TDoA’s-based underawter localization schemes. The proposed scheme performs better in terms of minimum mean square error (MSE) that is 1.5. Compared to ToA and TDoA, it demonstrates a 15 percent improvement in terms of MSE, end-to-end delay, and packets received at the base station. We used the MATLAB simulation tool for validation and testing.