VLF Magneto-Inductive Signaling and Navigation

Abstract

The long-term goal is to establish the feasibility of using Very Low Frequency (VLF) Magnetic Induction (MI) as a practical technology for providing navigation information to divers or Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) performing any of a variety of tasks in choppy salt water where RF and sonar methods are difficult to apply. In this program, we make use of magnetic fields as the source of navigation information. The earth's magnetic field has been used for millennia as a navigation aid. The field exists almost everywhere, it penetrates salt water and most rock formations and it has a specific direction that is useful for keeping objects oriented anywhere they are deployed. The specific objective of this program is the development of an MI-based navigation system for use by divers, swimmers or by small AUVs in a wide range of countermine and reconnaissance missions, conducted primarily in the surf zone or very shallow water. The approach will be platform independent, immune to surf noise and geographic variations, be clandestine in operation and provide an operating radius of at least a kilometer.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1998
Accession Number
ADA539520

Entities

People

  • Tony Aponick

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
  • Data Sets
  • Detectors
  • Divers
  • Errors
  • Magnetic Fields
  • Magnetic Induction
  • Measurement
  • Navigation
  • Salt Water
  • Shallow Water
  • Sonar
  • Synthetic Aperture Sonar
  • Underwater Vehicles
  • Vehicles
  • Very Low Frequency
  • Water

Readers

  • Coastal Oceanography
  • Electromagnetic Wave Scattering and Antenna Radiation Engineering
  • Geospatial Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence Analytics