Subsurface position system to track englacier and subglacier water flow through a glacier

A new Subsurface Positioning System (SPS) is proposed in order to study the englacial and subglacial water flow through a glacier. The proposed SPS consists of a beacon module that is carried by the flow of water and several receiver modules located on surface of the glacier. The receiver modules track the time of arrival (TOA) of received PN-coded beacon signal as the beacon module is carried through the glacier. A Kalman filter that contemplates the dynamics behavior of the beacon, the accumulated clock error and the TOA measurements by the receivers is proposed to compensate the error associate in the range measurements in order to achieve a smooth estimate of the trajectory. Simulations were conducted to evaluate the best possible accuracy of the estimation of the trajectory achievable with the proposed method. The simulation results indicate the proposed Kalman filter smoother method can estimate the position with an accuracy of 1m in the horizontal plane and within 3 m in the vertical plane.