New advanced underwater navigation techniques based on surface relay buoys

The development of medium and long range UUVs, associated with most recent operational concepts create new requirements for advanced underwater navigation systems that must be accurate, easy to deploy at sea and low cost. At the same time, the broad use of GPS for navigation purposes allows manufacturers to produce low cost and highly accurate receivers, opening the market to new solutions in underwater navigation equipment based on surface relay buoys (SRBs). We present some of the requirements generated by the new operational concept associated with UUVs missions. An historical survey of the main families of underwater navigation equipment used by submarine and ROVs operator over the 1975-1990 period is included with a description of the associated advantages and disadvantages: long base line (LBL); short base line (SBL, USBL); inertial navigation (INS); and gyro-Doppler. Some new solutions based on surface relay buoys deployment (SRBs) applied for example to: MCM operations, and the survey of nuclear wrecks are described. Topics such as advantages, precisions that could be reached, investment and operational costs are also covered