Study on underwater synthetic navigation system based on inertial navigation system and multibeam bathymetric system

Inertial navigation system (INS) is an independent navigation system, but is difficult to be used in far-distance and long-time navigation due to INS accumulation error. Thus, a new synthetic navigation system for underwater based on the integration of INS and multibeam bathymetric system (MBS) is studied and presented in the paper. Firstly, we introduce the composition of the underwater navigation system and the functions of each unit in the system. Secondly, we introduce the work principle of the integrated system. Thirdly, a complete navigation and positioning algorithm based on contour match is studied deeply. In the work, first of all, we study the method of drawing contours with MBS bathymetric data. Then by means of image matching technique, we study a fast image matching algorithm based on wavelet transformation and sequential similarity detection algorithm (SSDA). According to above work, we fulfill the contour match and the determination of underwater vehicle. In order to test the integrated system, an experiment is implemented with observed MBS data and simulated INS data finally. The experimental result proves that the system has high navigation and positioning accuracy, as well as credibility and stability. ©2009 IEEE.