Subsonus

Acoustic Positioning System (USBL)

Subsonus is a next-generation USBL underwater acoustic positioning system that delivers accurate position, velocity and heading at depths of up to 1000 metres. It features an industry-leading hydrophone array and INS built into a miniature titanium enclosure – small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Additionally, Subsonus can operate as an underwater modem capable of transmitting user data seamlessly.

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Sydney, AU

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Description

Industry-Leading Hydrophone Array

Subsonus features an industry-leading, eight-channel, factory-calibrated hydrophone array. This array allows Subsonus to deliver superior angular and ranging accuracy. Each hydrophones is part of a new, highly directional in-house design, providing incredible receive sensitivity while offering exceptional noise and multipath rejection. Despite the individual directionality, the complete array ensures a comprehensive acoustic field of view, enabling the tracking targets from any direction.

Integrated Tightly Coupled INS

Incorporated within Subsonus is a tightly coupled inertial navigation system (INS), which merges the system's acoustic positioning and Doppler velocity data with factory-calibrated inertial sensors and a depth sensor. This integration helps achieve an optimal solution, with accuracy levels far beyond those of standalone acoustic positioning systems. Consequently, Subsonus can provide reliable, low noise, high update rate position, and velocitydata suitable for control purposes.

Automatic Speed Of Sound

Subsonus introduces a new method for measuring the speed of sound through water, rendering the system self-tuning. This innovation eliminates the need for additional equipment or user input during setup, thereby minimising the potential for 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 errors. Subsonus is capable of operating at ranges and depths of up to 1000 metres.

Acoustic Heading

Subsonus works using an inverted USBL scheme, which allows it to provide accurate acoustic heading to the subsea vehicle. This allows the onboard Subsonus unit to offer absolute position, velocity and heading data without requiring a data-transferring tether. Additionally, Subsonus is compatible with most major beacons in a standard USBL configuration.

Fully Integrated Miniature Enclosure

Subsonus eliminates the typical reliance on external equipment such as rack mount units, interface boxes or PCs. All processing is performed within the unit and the system connects through a single ethernet connection for data output. It also features a web browser-based user interface to simplify operations and accessibility.

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Specifications

Transponders: Dry weight {kg}

1.17

Depth rating {m}

1000

Additional functions

Acoustic heading, simultaneous communication and positioning

System Parameters: Frequency {kHz}

30

Spread spectrum technology

Y

Min. operation range {m}

0.1

Max. operation range {m}

1000

Operation beam angle {deg}

300

Angle accuracy (degr) @ 20 dB

0.1

Focussed beam forming

N

Horizontal accuracy (in % of the water depth)

0.5

Vertical accuracy (in % of the water depth)

0.5

Number of active elements

8

Number of transponder channels

16000

Multi user functionality

Y

LBL-functionality

N

Motion compensation: Required pitch uncertainty [deg}

0.1

Required roll uncertainty [deg]

0.1

Required heave uncertainty [m]

0.05

Motion sensors compatible to the system:

Internal INS, External NMEA

Interfaces: Compatible hardware

NMEA0183: Ethernet [TCP/UDP]

Compatible software

Embedded web-MMI compatible via Ethernet NMEA

Real-time access procedure

Ethernet 100mbps

Inertial interfacing

Y