A high accuracy position and attitude measure sonar for submarine docking

With the underwater vehicles used increasingly in marine development, the submersible's underwater docking has become an important technical issue to be solved urgently for the submersible's underwater material conveying and information exchange. Moreover, it is based on high-precision underwater acoustic positioning technology. This paper presents a high-precision position and attitude measurement sonar for submarine docking called DJUSBL, which is developed independently by Science and Technology on Underwater Acoustic Laboratory in China. The sonar can measure the locations of the submersible relative to the multiple transponders, solve the attitudes of the submersible with respect to the docking platform, and fulfill the submersible's leading and docking. The paper focuses on the structure of the sonar, the method of measuring the position and attitude, and the test results about the leading and docking trial. The trial results indicate that DJUSBL sonar can satisfy the need for submersible's underwater docking owing to its measured position and attitude precision less than 5cm and 5deg respectively.