Application Development for Real-Time Location Tracking for Underwater Vehicles Using Low-Cost GPS with GSM

Oceans cover 70% of the Earth. All the countries surrounded by the ocean have their boundaries defined by the International Sea Bed Authority (ISBA) in the international waters. The surface vessels, ships, drifter buoys, autonomous profile drifters and long endurance autonomous underwater vehicles when crossing their operational boundaries are violated and on security grounds and non-violation of the rules, the onshore user or ship captain should be given alert while crossing the boundaries in the ocean. With the above objective, using a low-cost GPS receiver integrated with GSM service, a friendly user application has been developed using MIT App Inventor 2.0 which is an open-source software. This application is designed, developed and validated by pre-defining the boundary position and checking the alert message and call when the user is crossing the boundary. This shall be very helpful to the fishing boats, surface vessels and other applications. It is found the position accuracy is 10 m and the delay in updation of the location is approximately 30 seconds in the clear sky view.