Characterization of Measurement Errors in a LBL Positioning System

Abstract

There are several sources of error affecting the accuracy of underwater ranging using acoustic signals. These errors have a direct impact in the performance of Long Baseline (LBL) navigation system. This paper presents the results of experiments designed to characterize the most significant sources of errors in acoustic ranging. For the experiments, we use a set of acoustic devices and compare distances given by GPS differences with and acoustic ranges. We describe the experimental procedure and we process the results to provide a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the errors.