Low-Cost Multi-Antenna GNSS Buoys for Marine Environment Sensing

GNSS technology offers the capabilities of global coverage and all-weather positioning and velocity measurement. Deploying modular, low-cost GNSS equipment on small buoys enables ocean environment monitoring, such as of waves and tides, by utilizing precise displacement and velocity information obtained from GNSS signals. Furthermore, networking multiple buoys can capture subtle changes during air-sea exchange processes and support marine target detection. However, the limited anti-interference capability of low-cost GNSS buoys under complex sea states results in reduced measurement accuracy, poor robustness, and constrained sensing dimensions, which severely restrict their operational deployment.

 To address these issues, this work conducts an in-depth investigation into the application of low-cost GNSS buoys for robust multi-element marine environment  sensing. The main contributions are as follows:

• A low-cost GNSS buoy measurement system is designed. A multi-antenna GNSS buoy platform(MGB) is developed along with three core modules for precise GNSS positioning, high-precision velocity measurement, and marine environmental sensing, providing a reliable foundation for algorithm development and field validation.
• A tide level measurement model based on a multi-antenna GNSS buoy is developed. To tackle the issues of gross errors in GNSS-derived tide level measurements and high-frequency oceanic noise disturbances, a noise-processing model integrating an attitude error correction model with a robust Vondrak filtering algorithm is established.
• A robust wave inversion model based on low-cost GNSS buoys is established. To reduce distortion in wave parameter estimation caused by abnormal GNSS velocity measurements, a comprehensive velocity determination method is proposed.  A mapping model based on random wave theory is developed to transform GNSS velocity sequences into the wave spectrum, accompanied by a spectral moment parameter estimation model.
• A ship sensing model based on low-cost GNSS buoys is proposed. We exploit the observation information from GNSS buoys and employs wavelet analysis for time–frequency transformation to extract ship Kelvin wake signatures.