Underwater acoustic localization (UWAL) is a useful technique, and is applied in finding the acoustical sources, such as the black box. The existing UWAL methods are mainly based on the time of arrival (TOA), the time difference of arrival (TDOA), and the direction of arrival (DOA), which need the time synchronization, the knowledge of signal period, and the high precision angular measurement, respectively. However, these conditions are difficult to be satisfied in the scene of locating the black box utilizing single autonomous underwater vehicle. In this article, we propose the definition of second-order time difference of arrival (STDOA) and establish the localization model based on the STDOA. The proposed STDOA-based method eliminates the unknown signal period and overcomes the restriction of the traditional TDOA-based method. Combined with the particle filter, target tracking algorithm based on the STDOA is also presented. Precision analysis and the simulation results validate the effectiveness of the STDOA-based method and prove that the proposed method achieves a comparable localization precision compared with the TOA-based method and the TDOA-based method, and a higher precision compared to the DOA-based method.

中文翻译：

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基于二阶到达时间差的单自主水下航行器黑匣子水下声学定位

水下声学定位 (UWAL) 是一种有用的技术，用于寻找声源，例如黑匣子。现有的UWAL方法主要基于到达时间（TOA）、到达时间差（TDOA）和到达方向（DOA），需要时间同步、信号周期的知识和高精度分别进行角度测量。然而，在利用单个自主水下航行器定位黑匣子的场景中，这些条件难以满足。在本文中，我们提出了二阶到达时间差（STDOA）的定义，并建立了基于二阶到达时间差的定位模型。所提出的基于STDOA的方法消除了未知信号周期，克服了传统的基于TDOA的方法的限制。结合粒子滤波器，提出了基于STDOA的目标跟踪算法。精度分析和仿真结果验证了基于 STDOA 的方法的有效性，并证明该方法与基于 TOA 的方法和基于 TDOA 的方法相比实现了可比的定位精度，与基于 DOA 的方法相比具有更高的精度方法。