Temporal and spectral spread submarine locator transmitter, and method and installation using same

An underwater tracking method by temporal and spectral spread, said method comprising the steps of:

• transmitting aperiodic pulsed acoustic signals from acoustic transmitters located with equipment or mobile units to be tracked and/or identified, said acoustic transmitters transmitting their aperiodic pulsed acoustic signals according to respective different predetermined pseudo-random sequences;
• receiving the transmitted pulsed acoustic signals at acoustic receivers located at one or more points of measurement in a work area where the equipment or mobile units to be tracked are located, each of said equipment or mobile units further having a time scale reference and a means of tracking said point of measurement;
• and
• transmitting information produced by the points of measurement to a processing center where, at each moment of detection on a given frequency band, it is associated with a precise dating in a time scale referential system and a position of said point of measurement in a spatial referential system;
• all of this information from different points of measurement being processed by level 2 correlation with reference pseudo-random sequences of pulses corresponding to each of said acoustic transmitters.