Advanced Navigation has announced the release of their Subsonus USBL underwater acoustic positioning system.
Subsonus is a next generation USBL underwater acoustic positioning system that provides high accuracy position, velocity and heading at depths of up to 1000 metres. The system features an industry leading calibrated hydrophone array combined with an internal tightly coupled INS, all packed into a miniature titanium enclosure small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.
Subsonus is the result of four years of development at Advanced Navigation's acoustic research facility. The system is currently undergoing final in-field testing and will start shipping to customers in Q2 2015.
Some of the highlighted features of the system are listed below.
Next Generation Hydrophone Array
Subsonus features an industry leading eight channel calibrated hydrophone array. With so many hydrophones, Subsonus is able to offer superior angular and ranging accuracy. Subsonus's hydrophones are a new highly directional in-house design that offer incredible receive sensitivity combined with exceptional noise and multipath rejection. Despite each elements directionality, the complete array of eight provides a full acoustic field of view for tracking targets from any direction.
Automatic Speed of Sound
Subsonus has the ability to measure the speed of sound through water using a revolutionary new technique. This means that the system is self calibrating and no extra equipment or user intervention is required to setup the system, reducing the risk of operator errors.
Dynamic Transmit Power
Subsonus dynamically adjusts its acoustic transmit power based upon ranging distance. This results in highly improved short range performance by significantly reducing noise and multipath. Subsonus features an operating range and depth of up to 1000 metres.
Integrated Tightly Coupled INS
Subsonus features an integrated tightly coupled inertial navigation system. This allows it to offer high accuracy factory calibrated orientation alignment as well as continuous output of position and velocity. Subsonus not only measures position acoustically but also doppler velocity. All of this combined makes Subsonus the most accurate acoustic positioning system on the market.
Acoustic Heading
Subsonus works on an inverted USBL scheme which allows it to provide accurate acoustic heading to the subsea vehicle. Additionally because reference position and heading is transmitted acoustically, the Subsonus unit on the subsea vehicle can output absolute position, velocity and heading without the use of a tether for data transfer. Subsonus can also operate in a standard USBL scheme where it is compatible with most major beacons.
Fully Integrated Miniature Enclosure
Subsonus does away with the typical reliance on external equipment such as rack mount units, interface boxes or PCs. All processing is done internally inside the miniature titanium enclosure and the system connects through a single ethernet connection for data output. It features an entirely web browser based user interface.
For more information, visit www.advancednavigation.com.au.
