Acoustic range estimation of underwater vehicle with outlier elimination

When measuring the radiated noise of an underwater vehicle, the range information between the vehicle and the receiver is an important factor, but since Global Positioning System (GPS) is not available in underwater, an alternative method is needed. As an alternative, the range is measured by estimating the arrival time, arrival time difference, and arrival frequency difference using a separate acoustic signal. However, errors occur due to the channel environment, and these outliers become obstacles in continuously measuring range. In this paper, we propose a method to reduce errors by curve fitting with a function in the form of a V-curve as a post-processing to remove outliers that occurred in the process of measuring range information. Simulation, lake and sea trials were conducted to verify the performance of the proposed method. In the results of the lake trial, the range estimation error was reduced by about 85 % from the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) point of view.