[PSUBS-MAILIST] Underwater Navigation

[Cliff Redus via Personal_Submersibles]

 Alan, an alternative would be to order an off-the-shelf USBL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_baseline_acoustic_positioning_system system like Subsonus | Advanced Navigation



    On Saturday, August 31, 2019, 05:54:47 AM CDT, Alan via Personal_Submersibles <personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:  
 
 I was looking at GPS receivers for my sub, mainly for estimating my
surface speed & determining my range based on my power consumption.
But it occurred to me that you could make a similar system to GPS for
underwater navigation.
Have 4 buoys placed around your intended dive location that have GPS
receivers & ultrasonic transmitters. With a bit of electronics the submarine 
could locate itself with trilateration ( as in GPS) in relation to the 4 bouys.
The 4 buoys in turn are locating their position off satellites & relaying this
information via the ultrasonic transmitters to the sub. This way the pilot
could use charts to plot where they were & where they had been. 
It wouldn't matter too much if the buoys were blown about or if they moved 
in the current as they would update their position.
It may be helpful for grid searching.
If you wanted to get more serious you could put small motors on the buoys
that automatically held them in position as Minnkota are now doing with
their radio controlled motor.
Or is this already done?
Alan

You bolt this unit to the top of your sub and drop the corresponding tender transponder into the water and  the sub (as well as the tender) knows its submerged GPS location real time.  Tender knows it's GPS location and the surface unit calculates the relative location of the sub then sends the calculated GPS location back to the sub real time.  There are a number of these USBL systems.  For the Psub community, the trick would be to standardize on one that does not cost an arm and a leg.

Cliff

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