Development and testing of a Dual Accelerometer Vector Sensor for AUV acoustic surveys

This paper presents the design, manufacturing and testing of a Dual Accelerometer Vector
Sensor (DAVS). The device was built within the activities of the WiMust project, a 
European Commission  project, supported under the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme,
which aims to improve the efficacy of the methodologies used to perform geophysical
acoustic surveys at sea by the use of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) . The DAVS
contributes to this aim  in various ways, for example,  owing to its spatial filtering
capability, it can measure reflections at the desired direction therefore reducing the
amount of post processing related to deghosting and multipath removal. Also its compact
size allows easier integration with AUVs and hence facilitates the vehicle
maneuverability compared to the classical towed arrays. The DAVS device consists of two
tri-axial accelerometers and one hydrophone molded in one unit. The device's directional
estimation capabilities were evaluated on an AUV, which was sailing around a deployed
sound source. Results of this experiment are presented in this paper.