Underwater acoustic sensor network localization using four directional beams

In this paper, an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) based localization algorithm is proposed that uses four directional acoustic beams with fixed angles on AUV to broadcast messages periodically. These messages contain current position of AUV and ID of the transmitter beam. The passive sensors receive these messages and find two of them issued by different successive beams in one side of AUV path that they place on the center lines (greatest power section) of these two different transmitter beams. These two messages are used to estimate the sensors position. Major advantage of this method is being silent that leads to energy efficiency and no need time synchronization among sensor nodes. Performance of the proposed localization method is evaluated by simulations, using MATLAB. Simulation results show that localization accuracy and successfully of the proposed method by choosing optimum value of parameters such as transmission interval, beam width and satisfying coverage condition of all deployed sensor nodes is high.