Long-Range Passive Doppler-Only Target Tracking by Single-Hydrophone Underwater Sensors with Mobility

Abstract For decades, the Doppler effect has been exploited for tracking of targets through RADAR or SONAR systems. Despite this legacy of solutions, none of them can directly apply to the long-range tracking problem in a passive SONAR context. The proposed concept alleviates this deficiency by suggesting a geometry-based and Doppler-only scheme for long-range tracking of targets evolving along piecewise-linear trajectories. In particular, it is demonstrated that two underwater sensors, one fixed and one mobile, suffice for tracking a distant target. Moreover, those underwater sensors only need a single hydrophone. An example illustrates the main concepts.