Multiple AUV Navigation without Using Acoustic Beacons

Abstract Autonomous bottom sensor networks are increasingly used to collect various data near the sea bottom. Transmitting these large accumulated data arrays to the data collection and processing center is a pressing problem. A promising method to retrieve data from sensor nodes is to use multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV). The quality of underwater mission performance is then determined by accurate navigation of each vehicle within the group. The article presents a new efficient method of multiple AUV navigation for performing the vital task – servicing the autonomous network of bottom sensor stations. The method requires neither beacons of long baseline acoustic navigation system (LBL ANS) nor surface vehicles. During the mission, some AUVs are moving to the target sensor nodes, while the others are docked to the sensor nodes, read out the accumulated data, and perform the maintenance procedures (battery recharging, state diagnostics, and correction of the mission program). The main idea of the method is that the AUVs docked to the sensor nodes function as temporary stationary beacons of the differential ranging (DR) ANS for the other moving AUVs. The algorithms of the proposed navigation method are considered.