A rigorous real-time acoustic positioning method for ocean bottom seismic exploration

The conventional technique for positioning seafloor geophones in ocean bottom seismic exploration encounters several challenges, including the significant impact of outliers on positioning results, underutilization of high-precision observations, and low efficiency in real-time data processing. These issues inevitably affect the quality of seismic exploration outcomes. To address these challenges and enhance the accuracy of geophone positioning, this paper proposes a rigorous real-time acoustic positioning method for geophones based on sequential adjustment and Baarda's outlier detection approach. The proposed method comprises three key steps: grouping the original acoustic observations, constructing the intra-group acoustic positioning model, and synthesizing the positioning results across the different groups. The validity and practicality of this approach are confirmed through a simulation experiment as well as the field experiment conducted in the Bohai Sea, China. The results demonstrate that the proposed method effectively eliminates outliers in the original observations and maximizes the utilization of high-quality observations. Compared to traditional acoustic positioning methods, it significantly reduces positioning errors from meters to decimeters, and in some cases can achieve centimeter-level precision. When the sound velocity profile in the operating sea area is measured, the method can attain the posterior standard deviation at the millimeter level and positioning errors within 10 cm. When the sound velocity profile is unknown, the method can achieve the posterior standard deviation at centimeter-level and positioning errors of approximately 20 cm.