Compact, Light Weight, Low Cost, Precision, Non-inertial Underwater Navigation Sensor

Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) provide an ideal platform for conducting reconnaissance missions in riverine and coastal environments. These platforms must be able to navigate accurately without access to GPS. Analysis, Design & Diagnostics (AD & D) has teamed up with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) to offer a high-performance Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) capability for UUVs operating in shallow water that uses a novel omni transducer based approach to provide highly accurate navigation inputs and bottom mapping in a light weight, low volume, low power, low cost configuration. This approach uses interferometric signal processing to allow a reduction in required system hardware complexity when compared to a traditional Janus approach. In this effort, AD & D will focus on establishing system requirements, building the transducer, and processing returns to generate detection vectors consisting of range, Doppler, and solid angle to nearby bottom reflectors, while JHU/APL will focus on fusing these vectors to provide a velocity vector and a bottom map. JHU/APL will also be the lead on the sensor-UUV integration effort. In addition to its core navigation capabilities, with appropriate software, this sensor can also provide additional functionality including terrain avoidance, obstacle avoidance, wideband acoustic intercept, and ACOMMS.