Towards real-time under-ice acoustic navigation at mesoscale ranges

Abstract

This paper describes an acoustic navigation system that provides mesoscale coverage (hundreds of kilometers) under the ice and presents results from the first multi-month deployment in the Arctic. The hardware consists of ice-tethered acoustic navigation beacons transmitting at 900 Hz that broadcast their latitude and longitude plus several bytes of optional control data. The real-time under-ice navigation algorithm, based on a Kalman filter, uses time-of-flight measurements from these sources to simultaneously estimate vehicle position and depth-averaged local currents. The algorithm described herein was implemented on Seagliders, a type of autonomous underwater glider (AUG), but the underlying theory is applicable to other autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). As part of an extensive field campaign from March to September 2014, eleven acoustic sources and four Seagliders were deployed to monitor the seasonal melt of the marginal ice zone (MIZ) in the Beaufort and northern Chukchi Seas. Beacon-to-beacon performance was excellent due to a sound duct at 100 m depth where the transmitters were positioned; the travel-time error at 200 km has a standard deviation of 40 m when sound-speed is known, and ranges in excess of 400 km were obtained. Results with the Seagliders, which were not regularly within the duct, showed reliable acoustic ranges up to 100 km and more sparse but repeatable range measurements to over 400 km. Navigation results are reported for the real-time algorithm run in post-processing mode, using data from a 295-hour segment with significant time spent under ice.