A Hybrid Path Optimization Method of USV with Underwater Acoustic Communication Constraint

Abstract

The hybrid path optimization method of unmanned surface vehicle (USV) with underwater acoustic communication constraint combines with energy attenuation characteristic, which minimizes the sail time of USV and also ensures that USV can collect the marine information of all the seabed-bases. The path planning of USV is similar to the traveling salesman problem (TSP). Genetic algorithm is used to optimize the path preliminarily. Traditional genetic algorithm is easy to fall into local extremum, separating mutation operation from crossover operation, and improving crossover and mutation operations. According to the energy attenuation characteristic of the underwater acoustic communication between the USV and the seabed-based, the communication area of each seabed-based is calculated, then makes further communication area optimization for preliminary optimized path. The simulation results verify that the path of further optimization is obviously better than the preliminary optimized path.