Title: Application of gravity passive aided strapdown inertial navigation in underwater vehicles

Authors: Qi Wang; Chang-Song Yang; Shao-En Wu; Yan Wang

Addresses: School of Computer and Software, Jiangsu Engineering Centre of Network Monitoring, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China ' School of Automation, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China ' Department of Computer Science, Ball State University, Muncie, 47306, USA ' School of Computer and Software, Jiangsu Engineering Centre of Network Monitoring, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

Abstract: Underwater navigation technology is the guarantee to ensure the underwater vehicles complete all tasks. A gravity passive aided strapdown inertial navigation system is proposed in order to improve the precision of position of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Improved unscented Kalman filter (IUKF) is applied in the novel integrated system which is based on gravity gradient characteristics. The main characteristics of strapdown inertial navigation system are presented, gravity-aided navigation system are introduced, and IUKF method is applied to the information fusion of integrated navigation system. Simulation experiments were carried out and the results show that the novel integrated navigation system proposed can get better performance of position precision comparing to the traditional Kalman filtering methods. The simulation experiment results suggest that the IUKF method applied in the gravity passive aided navigation system is capable of greatly improving the long-time navigation position, attitude and velocity precision comparing with the traditional information fusion method.

Keywords: underwater navigation; gravity passive aided; SINS; strapdown inertial navigation system; gravity gradient; IUKF; improved unscented Kalman filter.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2020.106635

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2020 Vol.32 No.4, pp.209 - 217

Received: 22 Nov 2019
Accepted: 08 Dec 2019

Published online: 15 Apr 2020 *

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