A TDOA Method for Underwater Target Location Using Distributed Multi-Agent Systems with Experiment Verification

The passive location methods for underwater target is particularly critical to both military and civilian domains, with Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) gaining widespread utilization across diverse applications. In this paper, the underwater target location method based on the TDOA with distributed multi-agent systems (UTL-DMS) is proposed to apply in the shallow water environment. The location of target is solved by constructing a set of pseudo-linear equations, requiring three observers of the distributed multi-agent system. The simulation results show that average location error is 1.48 m. The distributed multi-agent systems are constructed. The experiment is held to verify the method in the Qian Dao Lake in Hangzhou. All location errors are less than 20 m, which demonstrate the performance of the method by the experiment verification on a lake.