Advanced Navigation’s Cost-effective USBL Made Geosurvey Mexicana Able to Access New Markets

Geosurvey Mexicana specialises in Differential Global Positioning Systems (DGPS) services for the oil industry. The company has a broad area of expertise including marine survey and underwater research for both private and public markets. Geosurvey Mexicana contacted Advanced Navigation to provide an accurate and cost-effective navigation solution that would enable them to access new markets.

Challenge

Lacking a suitable system to provide positioning and orientation of suction piles Geosurvey Mexicana was unable to bid on some tenders. The company started to look for an USBL device capable of providing position and heading.
Talking about competing products, Alberto Antonio Duarte, Project Manager at Geosurvey Mexicana said “these systems were very expensive, and since the orientation of suction pile was just a small part of the global contracts, buying one of those wasn’t financially viable’’.

Solution

The company needed an underwater navigation system that would meet the required specification while offering a good return on investment.
‘’Looking for options we found the Advanced Navigation Subsonus USBL which provides all the benefits of competitor products but at a fraction of the cost and size’’ said Duarte.

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 provides all the benefits of competitor products but at a fraction of the cost and size. Alberto Antonio Duarte, Project Manager, Geosurvey Mexicana

Results

Upon receiving Subsonus the team at Geosurvey Mexicana compared it against their own USBL to make sure the solution was accurate and reliable, as Duarte explains:
“The procedure to compare with our existing USBL was to log the position of a beacon for 30 minutes to obtain a standard deviation accuracy on X,Y,Z. The exercise was carried out on a survey boat at a water depth of 15 metres and at three different positions, 10, 20 and 40 metres from the beacon positioned at the seabed. Our existing USBL behaved according to specifications at the first position at 10 metres from the survey boat. Still, as expected, the standard deviation almost doubled when the boat was taken 20metres away from the beacon. It doubled again when the boat went 40 metres away from the beacon. We carried out the same test with Subsonus. At 10 metres, the standard deviation was similar to our USBL, but at 20 metres and 40 metres, the Subsonus deviation did not increase much. In fact, it remained the same, which was very surprising.”

But the product is only part of the solution, and the Geosurvey Mexicana’s team was similarly impressed with Advanced Navigation’s support.

“At the time of preparation for the trial, we experienced Advanced Navigations client support which was great; we even received a bespoke firmware to meet our requirements,” said Duarte.