| A Motion Compensated (MC) Ultra Short Baseline (USBL) Acoustic Positioning System (APS) operable in shallow water and port environment has been implemented at Florida Atlantic University. Multi-tones signal modulation and log-likelihood maximization enable this APS to operate in volumes of water of less than 10 cubic meters. Standard deviations of the acoustic source elevation and azimuth estimates were computed to be 3 degrees in an 8 cubic meters test tank, and reduce to 0.9 degree in a 2 meters deep marina. The motion compensating system estimates the array position and orientation while merging noisy measurements from a Magnetic, Angular Rate, and Gravity (MARL) sensor and a Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) using Kalman filters. Experiments show 0.67 and 2.67 degrees of error for the array tilt and heading estimates, and 0.74 meter for the array position estimate. |
