An Ocean Bottom Flying Node AUV for Seismic Observations

Ocean Bottom Node (OBN) systems are commonly adopted methods for deep water oil and gas explorations. However, nodes in existing OBN systems are usually placed or recovered individually using a Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV). Thus, there is inefficiency as to the deployment and recovery of seismic survey. This paper proposes an Ocean Bottom Flying Node (OBFN) design that combines OBN and Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) techniques. It can cruise to the designated deep-water location and remain static at the seafloor to acquire long term seismic data. For positioning the OBFN swarms, a distributed underwater localization method that combines the long baseline localization and single beacon underwater tracking is presented in this paper.