Performance Comparison of ToA and TDOA Based Tracking In Underwater Multipath Environments Using Bernoulli Filter

Abstract Underwater localization and tracking is a challenging problem and Time-of-Arrival and Time-Difference-of-Arrival approaches are commonly used. However, the performance difference between these approaches is not well understood or analysed adequately. There are some analytical studies for terrestrial applications with the assumption that the signal arrival times are not correlated. However, this assumption is not valid for underwater propagation. To present the distinct nature of the problem under the water, a high-fidelity simulation is required. In this study, Time-of-Arrival and Time-Difference-of-Arrival approaches are compared using a ray tracing based propagation model. Moreover, basic methods to mitigate the multipath propagation problem are also implemented for Bernoulli filters. Since the Bernoulli filter is a joint detection and tracking filter, the detection performance is also analysed. Comparisons are done for all combinations of filter and measurement approaches. The results can help to design underwater localization systems better suited to the needs.