[PSUBS-MAILIST] Underwater Navigation

Alan via Personal_Submersibles personal_submersibles at psubs.org
Sat Aug 31 15:26:44 EDT 2019


Cliff,
yes looks like I am re-inventing the wheel a bit here.
the tag transponder for the Subsonus is US $2430. I would hate to
think what the Subsonus costs, & prices for it are only available by request.
My system is a bit different in that the transducer hanging from the buoy
would send data on it's GPS position to a receiver on the submarine. The
electronics on the sub would calculate its distance from the buoy by the
time it takes for various signals to arrive from the buoy, then calculate it's
GPS position by trilateration. 
It is not outside the realms of someone who tinkers with electronics to
put something like this together, as a lot of the components to it could
be bought cheaply.
Alan


> On 1/09/2019, at 1:29 AM, Cliff Redus via Personal_Submersibles <personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:
> 
> 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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