An integrated navigation system for underwater vehicles with range measurement

Abstract

This paper presents an integrated navigation system for underwater vehicles with inertial and acoustic sensors. The integrated navigation system is based on a strap-down inertial measurement unit (IMU), where auxiliary navigation sensors are range sonar, Doppler velocity log (DVL), magnetic compass and depth sensor. The range sonar can measure the distance from an underwater vehicle to a reference transponder on an underwater station. The main idea of the paper is to improve the performance of the IMU-DVL navigation system by introducing additional range information. The integrated navigation algorithm is based on the extended Kalman filter. The range measurement was modeled to extend the navigation algorithm, which could provide valuable information for the IMU-DVL navigation to reduce estimation error. Experiments were conducted to get motion data in an ocean engineering basin with rotating arm tests. Navigation simulation with the experimental data illustrates the effectiveness of the integrated navigation system assisted by the additional range measurement. This paper also checks the convergence of the integrated navigation system when the initial position error exists. Copyright ？ 2005 by The International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers.