Underwater Acoustic Location Estimation of Flight Recorder Using Onboard Ad Hoc Wireless Sensor Network

Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSN) are an upcoming technology for various underwater applications, such as environment monitoring and localization of objects. An important use case for underwater object localization is finding a flight recorder (black box) after an oceanic flight crash. Current technology for finding this black box uses hydrophone-equipped vessels or autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV). However, these methods arrive too late at the crash site complicating the search process. In this article, an alternative approach to locating the sinking black box is presented utilizing an UWSN onboard the aircraft. By registering acoustic ping signals of the underwater locator beacon (ULB) of the flight recorder, the nodes in the network collaboratively track the location of the sinking black box using a Time-Difference of Arrival (TDoA) approach. Underwater nodes are used to extend network coverage to deep-ocean levels and communicate their findings by utilizing wireless acoustic modems. Simulation results show that this approach enables locating the black box with an error less than 50 meters within 25 minutes after the first ping was sent by the ULB, outperforming current vessel-or AUV-based localization approaches in time and coverage.