Acoustic Multilateration for Marine Animal Tracking in Coral Reef Ecosystems: Combining Isodiachronic and Sequential Methods

This study introduces an enhanced acoustic mul-tilateration technique for marine animal localization that in-tegrates isodiachronic localization with sequential bound esti-mation methods, significantly improving positioning accuracy. The method improves localization reliability by systematically accounting for uncertainties in underwater sound speed, re-ceiver positions, and measurement errors. System performance was rigorously evaluated through extensive simulations using root mean square error (RMSE), bias, and standard deviation metrics. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves optimal positioning accuracy, particularly within the array coverage area, with a significant reduction in error using time-synchronized hydrophone arrays. Experimental validation using a five-hydrophone synchronized array will be conducted in the Keelung Chaojing Coral Reef Ecological Area to confirm the simulation results.