Deep ocean long range underwater navigation with ocean circulation model corrections

Abstract

An underwater navigation algorithm that provides a “cold start” (CSA) geographic position, geo-position, underwater while submerged using travel times measured from a constellation of acoustic sources is described in Mikhalevsky, Sperry, Woolfe, Dzieciuch, and Worcester [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 147(4), 2365 – 2382 (2020)]. The CSA geo-position is used as the receive position in the ocean for acoustic modeling runs using an ocean general circulation model (GCM). A different geo-position is calculated using adjusted ranges from the travel time offsets between the data and modeled arrival times for each source. Because the CSA geo-position is close to the true position, the source to CSA position propagation model path and the source to true vehicle position data path of the acoustic arrivals are nearly coincident, enabling accurate measurement of travel time offsets. The cold start with model (CSAM) processing reduced the CSA geo-position errors from a mean of 58 to 25 m. A simulation is developed to estimate CSA and CSAM performances as a function of group speed variability between the source paths. The CSAM geolocation accuracy can be calculated from and is controlled by the accuracy of the GCM.