An Efficient, Time-of-Flight-Based Underwater Acoustic Ranging System for Small Robotic Fish

Small (decimeter-scale) robotic fish are promising mobile sensor platforms for aquatic environments. Fine-grained localization for dense networks of such robotic fish presents a challenge because of noisy underwater environment, required submeter accuracy, and constraints on onboard processing power and hardware complexity. In this paper, we present an efficient time-of-flight-based acoustic ranging system for localization of robotic fish with limited onboard resources. The system involves simple hardware: a single pair of monotone buzzer and microphone. The distance between two nodes is determined by the time it takes for an acoustic signal generated by the buzzer on the first node to reach the microphone on the second node. The arrival of the signal is detected with the sliding discrete Fourier transform (SDFT) algorithm, where the rise dynamics of the signal is modeled and used for compensation of detection latency. The algorithm is implemented onboard a small biomimetic robotic fish, and experiments in an indoor pool have shown that the compensated SDFT algorithm results in an underwater ranging error of 1.9 wavelengths (1 m), and is thus promising for localization of dense aquatic networks.