MetaBlue: A Metasurface-Assisted Acoustic Underwater Localization System

TL;DR

MetaBlue introduces a low-cost, metasurface-assisted underwater localization system that enables accurate 3D positioning using a single anchor and minimal hardware, leveraging spectral pattern encoding and EM leakage for AoA and ToA estimation.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel metasurface design and a combined EM-acoustic ranging method for efficient, low-cost underwater localization with minimal hardware and single-anchor setup.

Findings

Achieves 8.7° average AoA error

0.37 m 3D localization error at over 10 m distance

Maintains 0.73 m precision with a single anchor

Abstract

Underwater localization is essential for marine exploration and autonomous underwater operations, yet existing radio frequency and optical approaches are limited by rapid attenuation or limited visibility. Acoustic sensing remains the most practical choice, but conventional acoustic systems typically rely on large arrays or multiple synchronized anchors, resulting in high hardware costs and complex deployment. This paper introduces a novel low-cost passive acoustic metasurface, MetaBlue , explicitly designed for underwater localization, which, when attached to an ordinary ultrasonic transmitter, transforms it into a directional "super-transmitter." The metasurface embeds direction-dependent spectral patterns into the transmitted waveform, enabling accurate angle-of-arrival (AoA) estimation using only a single hydrophone. For ranging, we present a new EM-acoustic mixed time-of-arrival (ToA) method that leverages the acoustic transducer's inherent low-frequency EM leakage as a timing reference, enabling precise ranging without shared clocks. This allows complete 3D localization with a single low-cost anchor. We evaluate the system across diverse real-world underwater settings, including pools, tanks, and outdoor environments. Experiments show that our design achieves an average AoA error of 8.7 degree and 3D localization error of 0.37 m at distances over 10 m. Even with a single anchor, the system maintains 0.73 m precision.