Underwater Acoustical Localization of the Black Box Utilizing Single Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Based on the Second-Order Time Difference of Arrival

Underwater acoustic localization (UWAL) is a useful technique, and is applied in finding the acoustical sources, such as the black box. The existing UWAL methods are mainly based on the time of arrival (TOA), the time difference of arrival (TDOA), and the direction of arrival (DOA), which need the time synchronization, the knowledge of signal period, and the high precision angular measurement, respectively. However, these conditions are difficult to be satisfied in the scene of locating the black box utilizing single autonomous underwater vehicle. In this article, we propose the definition of second-order time difference of arrival (STDOA) and establish the localization model based on the STDOA. The proposed STDOA-based method eliminates the unknown signal period and overcomes the restriction of the traditional TDOA-based method. Combined with the particle filter, target tracking algorithm based on the STDOA is also presented. Precision analysis and the simulation results validate the effectiveness of the STDOA-based method and prove that the proposed method achieves a comparable localization precision compared with the TOA-based method and the TDOA-based method, and a higher precision compared to the DOA-based method.