An Acoustic Positioning Algorithm for Complex Array Configurations on Underwater Platforms

The Ultra-short baseline(USBL) system plays an important role in underwater vehicle positioning, and the acoustic array is the core component in the USBL system. To adapt different models of platforms, acoustic arrays are typically designed with complex geometries. The existing positioning algorithms for complex arrays exhibit low computational efficiency due to the large number of subarray combinations in complex arrays. To address this challenge, we propose an efficient positioning algorithm for complex arrays by introducing a position correction term into the existing positioning model. It aims to reduce the number of subarray combinations by normalizing the positioning results of independent subarrays based on the position correction term. Simulation and field trial results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve positioning accuracy comparable to the existing algorithm, while requiring less computation time.