Dynamics of a Towed Cable with Sensor-Array for Underwater Target Motion Analysis

TL;DR

This paper develops a dynamic model of a towed cable and sensor array system to accurately localize the sensor array's position, improving underwater target motion analysis during military operations.

Contribution

It introduces a lumped-mass, interconnected rigid body model of the cable-sensor system, enabling precise orientation and position estimation of the sensor array.

Findings

The model accurately predicts cable and sensor array orientation.

Enhanced localization improves target tracking accuracy.

The approach supports better maneuver planning for underwater operations.

Abstract

During a war situation, many times an underwater target motion analysis (TMA) is performed using bearing-only measurements, obtained from a sensor array, which is towed by an own-ship with the help of a connected cable. It is well known that the own-ship is required to perform a manoeuvre in order to make the system observable and localise the target successfully. During the maneuver, it is important to know the location of the sensor array with respect to the own-ship. This paper develops a dynamic model of a cable-sensor array system to localise the sensor array, which is towed behind a sea-surface vessel. We adopt a lumped-mass approach to represent the towed cable. The discretized cable elements are modelled as an interconnected rigid body, kinematically related to one another. The governing equations are derived by balancing the moments acting on each node. The derived dynamics are solved simultaneously for all the nodes to determine the orientation of the cable and sensor array. The position of the sensor array obtained from this proposed model will further be used by TMA algorithms to enhance the accuracy of the tracking system.