Underwater Acoustic Positioning Patents: Top Companies & Trends 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (67 records) with 2024 (33) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 822 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the underwater acoustic positioning patent record shows
Underwater acoustic positioning covers the sensors, signal processing and vehicle-control methods used to locate and navigate underwater vehicles, seabed nodes and towed arrays where GPS does not reach. The 822 records in scope span 2015 through mid-2026, drawing filers from marine seismic survey houses, defence contractors and university robotics labs alike. Filing activity is shaped as much by offshore seismic survey cycles as by subsea defence programmes, which is why the technology composition leans so heavily on G01S sonar/positioning and G01V geophysics survey classes rather than pure navigation.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025-2026 counts in any trend chart are still filling in; the 2021-2024 window is the most recent period that can be read as a real decline rather than a data artifact. Family-level counting, used throughout this ranking, keeps continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction copies of the same invention from inflating any single filer's position.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 822-record dataset: how filing volume moved year over year, and how records split across IPC subclasses. Because a single record can carry several IPC codes, the class shares below add to more than 100% of the record total.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings rose from 27 in 2017 to a peak of 73 in 2022, then fell 51% from 67 in 2021 to 33 in 2024 — the last complete year on record. Treat 2025 and 2026 counts as provisional; they will revise upward as later publications are indexed.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
G01S (radar, sonar and positioning) appears in 49.1% of the 822 records and G01V (geophysics and gravity surveying) in 34.1%, confirming that seismic-survey-linked positioning is the dominant use case. Naval-vessel classes (B63G, B63B) and navigation/gyroscope class G01C each sit above 11%, while data-processing class G06F trails at 4.6% — a smaller but distinct software layer around the core sensing claims.
Shares are the percentage of the 822 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Subsea Engineering: Underwater Acoustic Positioning Patent Landscape with Eureka
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Try EurekaMost-cited underwater acoustic positioning patents
US20210141045A1 — FPGA-based real-time processing for underwater acoustic positioning
A field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based real-time processing system applied to underwater acoustic positioning and realizing reconfigurability and multiple output. The system includes a multi-interface control and command parsing module for sample information transmission and command parsing, a finite-state machine for sample management, a parallel correlation processor group for high-performance processing of multiple targets in parallel, and a multiple output data former for simultaneous data formation.Filed by Shanghai Acoustics Laboratory, Chinese Academy of Sciences (2021-05-13) — illustrates the shift from fixed-function DSP toward reconfigurable hardware for multi-target correlation processing.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5579285A | Method and device for the monitoring and remote control of unmanned, mobile underwater vehicles | 271 |
| 2 | US7139647B2 | Methods and systems for navigating under water | 93 |
| 3 | US20090207694A1 | Ultrasonic in-building positioning system based on phase difference array with ranging | 87 |
| 4 | US20140301161A1 | Marine seismic survey and method using autonomous underwater vehicles and underwater bases | 86 |
| 5 | US20160121983A1 | Deployment and retrieval of seismic autonomous underwater vehicles | 81 |
| 6 | US9090319B2 | Autonomous underwater vehicle for marine seismic surveys | 76 |
| 7 | US20030078706A1 | Methods and systems for navigating under water | 73 |
| 8 | US20060239122A1 | Apparatus, systems and methods for determining position of marine seismic acoustic receivers | 67 |
| 9 | US20160124105A1 | Touch down monitoring of an ocean bottom seismic node | 66 |
| 10 | US7417924B2 | Apparatus, systems and methods for determining position of marine seismic acoustic receivers | 65 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this corpus — read them as a signal of influence on the field, not of current commercial relevance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the concentration and citation data mean for filing strategy
The ranking, trend and citation data point to a field with one clear leader, a cooling filing curve, and prior art concentrated in a small number of foundational documents from vehicle navigation and seismic survey applications.
One filer well ahead, then a long tail
The leading assignee alone accounts for 66 records against a fifth-place figure of 19 and a tenth-place figure of 13 — a steep drop-off after the top few names. New entrants are filing into a field where the top 5 hold 29.7% of all 822 records, but the remaining 70% is fragmented across many single- and few-filing organisations, which leaves room to build a position without displacing an incumbent.
Past its 2022 peak, but not yet closed off
Filing volume rose steadily from 27 records in 2017 to a peak of 73 in 2022, then dropped 51% to 33 by 2024, the last year with a complete publication picture. That decline could reflect claim space filling up in the core sonar/positioning methods, a pullback in offshore seismic survey capex, or both — the dataset does not distinguish the two.
One foundational patent dominates the citation graph
US5579285A, covering monitoring and remote control of unmanned underwater vehicles, carries 271 citations — several times the next most-cited record. Any new filing on vehicle-level acoustic positioning control should expect this document to surface in an examiner's prior-art search regardless of filing year.
China leads receiving-office volume, US and EPO follow
China received 271 filings, ahead of the United States at 196, EPO at 87, WIPO/PCT at 73, Australia at 29 and Norway at 26. That order signals where domestic examination pressure and local competitor filings are heaviest, and where a freedom-to-operate check matters most before commercial deployment.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to subsea engineering: underwater acoustic positioning patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Where to take this analysis
The figures above establish the shape of the field. Turning that into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means drilling into specific claims, specific assignees, and the sub-areas that remain thinly claimed.
Check freedom-to-operate against the top-cited records
US5579285A alone carries 271 citations and anchors vehicle-level positioning control claims; a new filing in this space should be checked against it and the other most-cited records before drafting.
Explore prior art in EurekaTrack the leading filers' recent activity
With several top assignees showing sharp year-on-year declines into the latest tracked year, a live monitor is more reliable than a static snapshot for deciding whether a competitor has genuinely paused or is simply mid-filing-cycle.
Set up assignee tracking in EurekaDraft into the under-claimed sub-areas
Reconfigurable hardware for multi-target correlation and phase-difference ranging show thinner direct claim density than the core sonar/positioning classes, which is where a well-drafted first claim has the most room.
Run a white-space search in EurekaCommon questions about underwater acoustic positioning patents
The assignee ranking for this dataset shows one filer with 66 records, well ahead of the field's fifth-place holder at 19 and tenth-place holder at 13. That leader, along with the rest of the top five, accounts for 29.7% of all 822 records in scope, but the remaining share is spread across many organisations with only a handful of filings each. This means the field has a clear leader but no monopoly — there is meaningful room for a new entrant to build a defensible position without confronting the top filer directly.
No — filing peaked at 73 records in 2022 and then fell 51%, from 67 in 2021 to 33 in 2024, the most recent year with a complete publication picture. Filings from 2025 onward will still revise upward as publications catch up, since publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, so it is too early to call the trend a permanent decline. What is clear is that the field has moved past its highest-activity period and is now filing at roughly half that peak rate.
The two largest IPC subclasses are G01S (radar, sonar and positioning), covering 49.1% of the 822 records, and G01V (geophysics and gravity surveying), covering 34.1%. Naval vessel classes B63G and B63B, navigation class G01C, and transmission class H04B each cover more than 7% of records, reflecting how positioning claims sit alongside vessel design, navigation and communications. Because a single patent can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares add up to well over 100% of the record total, which is expected and not an error.
US20210141045A1 describes an FPGA-based real-time processing system for underwater acoustic positioning, built around a multi-interface command parsing module, a finite-state machine for sample management, a parallel correlation processor group, and a multiple-output data former. It blocks reconfigurable-hardware implementations that match its specific architecture for parallel multi-target correlation processing, but it does not cover positioning methods built on fixed-function DSP, software-only correlation, or single-target processing chains. A design-around would typically move the correlation step off reconfigurable hardware or restructure the output-forming stage.
The data-processing layer around positioning (G06F) covers only 4.6% of the 822 records, well below the core sonar and geophysics classes, suggesting software-side claims around positioning outputs are comparatively thin. Sub-areas like phase-difference ranging arrays and AUV-to-seabed docking positioning also show less direct claim density than the core sonar/positioning classes. These are reasonable places to start a novelty search precisely because the incumbents' filing effort has concentrated elsewhere.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.