Pseudo-noise based time of arrival estimation for underwater acoustic sensor localization

Abstract

This paper compares the performance of single pseudo-noise (PN) and dual PN (DPN) sequences for time of arrival (ToA) estimation in underwater acoustic (UWA) localization. The single PN scheme uses the correlation of a local PN sequence and the received PN signal to estimate the ToA. The DPN scheme utilizes the cross correlation of the two received PN segments in one signal frame to calculate the ToA. Both simulation and field test results show that the DPN design outperforms the single PN scheme, as the DPN scheme is robust to the severe underwater acoustic channel dispersion and the high carrier frequency offset (CFO) in low-cost hardware systems where the atomic clock is unavailable.