An Underwater Positioning and Tracking Evaluation Method

Underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs) use sound waves as carriers for underwater communication. Due to the complexity of underwater channels, unstable reception of acoustic signals from targets by underwater sensors can lead to packet loss. This phenomenon causes missing of time delay information required for target positioning. If the time delay loss persists for a long time, it will lead to unstable target tracking and eventually result in the loss of the target's position. This paper investigates the impact of the aforementioned phenomena on underwater positioning and tracking performance in UASNs and attempts to quantify it. Existing evaluation methods focus solely on positioning accuracy, neglecting the impact of time delay information loss on the stability of tracking systems. To address this issue, we propose an underwater positioning and tracking evaluation method considering time delay information loss, named Underwater Positioning and Tracking Accuracy (UPTA). The UPTA integrates both target positioning accuracy and tracking system stability into a unified metric, enabling comparison among different methods. This paper first establishes an underwater positioning and tracking model under time delay information loss conditions, analyzes the impact of time delay information loss on positioning and tracking, and presents intuitive demonstrations through simulations. Furthermore, using contrast datasets generated from the simulation model, we verify that UPTA is a more effective and intuitive evaluation method.