Application of PSO on Electromagnetic Induction-Based Subsea Cable Detection

Abstract

Subsea cables face more and more challenges due to the increasing marine economic activities and frequent natural disasters, such as anchorage, fishing, widening, earthquake and tsunami, which greatly affect the life of subsea cables and pipelines. Firstly, this paper reviews the situation of subsea cables and the resulting difficulties for localization. The tradition subsea detection methods, such as hydroacoustic and visual methods, are excluded from the subsea cable detection and localization due to the applicability of detection for large-sized and exposed subsea pipelines. Based on the structural composition of different subsea cables, the active electromagnetic sensing method are selected as the optimal approach to combined with particle swarm optimization (PSO). Secondly, based on the extensive application of the swarm intelligent optimization algorithm in practical engineering, this paper proposes a novel subsea cable localization (discrete cable location and burial depth) method by using an underactuated autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) carrying with a tri-axial electromagnetic sensor. The electromagnetic sensor is used to capture the magnetic signal which are radiated from the AC electrified subsea cable. Based on the framework of PSO and electromagnetic signal sequences, the PSO localization method is designed. Furthermore, the electromagnetic sensing based PSO localization method is compared with cable-following detection and tracking method from the practical view. Finally, a principle numerical simulation is design to test the effectiveness of the proposed subsea cable localization method. In order to meet the practical demands, the PSO should be modified to improve the stability and convergence speed, the online path planning and platform motion control method should be developed.