Jinwu Tong: Key Laboratory of Micro-Inertial Instruments and Advanced Navigation Technology, Ministry of Education, School of Instrument Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China. tongjinwu@seu.edu.cn. ORCID
Xiaosu Xu: Key Laboratory of Micro-Inertial Instruments and Advanced Navigation Technology, Ministry of Education, School of Instrument Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China. xxs@seu.edu.cn. ORCID
Lanhua Hou: Key Laboratory of Micro-Inertial Instruments and Advanced Navigation Technology, Ministry of Education, School of Instrument Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China. lanhua_hou@seu.edu.cn.
Yao Li: Key Laboratory of Micro-Inertial Instruments and Advanced Navigation Technology, Ministry of Education, School of Instrument Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China. liyao@seu.edu.cn.
Jian Wang: Key Laboratory of Micro-Inertial Instruments and Advanced Navigation Technology, Ministry of Education, School of Instrument Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China. 230169708@seu.edu.cn.
Liang Zhang: Key Laboratory of Micro-Inertial Instruments and Advanced Navigation Technology, Ministry of Education, School of Instrument Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China. zhangliang418@seu.edu.cn.
The USBL (Ultra-Short Base Line) positioning system is widely used in underwater acoustic positioning systems due to its small size and ease of use. The traditional USBL positioning system is based on 'slant range and azimuth'. The positioning error is an increasing function with the increase in distance and the positioning accuracy depends on the ranging accuracy of the underwater target. This method is not suitable for long-distance underwater positioning operations. This paper proposes a USBL positioning calculation model based on depth information for 'rotating array and reusing elements'. This method does not need to measure the distance between the USBL acoustic array and target, so it can completely eliminate the influence of long-distance ranging errors in USBL positioning. The theoretical analysis and simulation experiments show that the new USBL positioning model based on 'rotating array and reusing elements' can completely eliminate the influence of the wavelength error and spacing error of underwater acoustic signals on the positioning accuracy of USBL. The positioning accuracy can be improved by approximately 90%, and the horizontal positioning error within a positioning distance of 1000 m is less than 1.2 m. The positioning method has high precision performance in the long distance, and provides a new idea for the engineering design of a USBL underwater positioning system.
