OPTIMIZING UNDERWATER POSITIONING

DBV Technology has developed a new suite of instruments for Underwater GPS and Seafloor Geodesy. These instruments simultaneously provide navigation and positioning services to underwater vehicles and sensors while deriving operational benefits from operating in conjunction with uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) technology. The resulting systems offer improved accuracy, higher updates rates, lower latency, and simplified logistics when compared to traditional underwater positioning methods (i.e., transponder based Long Baseline, Short Baseline or Ultra-Short Baseline systems). Underwater GPS, as the name implies, is an underwater positioning system. However, it is also a misnomer in the sense that no underwater positioning system can provide truly global coverage, and instead achieves coverage over a limited regional area. Despite this limitation in naming, the use of Underwater GPS persists because of other features and similarities between this form of underwater positioning and its space based counterpart.