An accurate observation model and statistical model are critical in underwater integrated navigation. However, it is often the case that the statistical characteristics of noise are unknown through the ultra-short baseline (USBL) system/Doppler velocity log (DVL) integrated navigation in the deep-sea. Additionally, the velocity of underwater vehicles relative to the bottom of the sea or the currents is commonly provided by the DVL, and an adaptive filtering solution is needed to correctly estimate the velocity with unknown currents. This paper focuses on the estimation of unknown currents and measurement noise covariance for an underwater vehicle based on the USBL, DVL, and a pressure gauge (PG), and proposes a novel unbiased adaptive two-stage information filter (ATSIF) for the underwater vehicle (UV) with an unknown time-varying currents velocity. In the proposed algorithm, the adaptive filter is decomposed into a standard information filter and an unknown currents velocity information filter with interconnections, and the time-varying unknown ocean currents and measurement noise covariance are estimated. The simulation and experimental results illustrate that the proposed algorithm can make full use of high-precision observation information and has better robustness and navigation accuracy to deal with time-varying currents and measurement outliers than existing state-of-the-art algorithms.
Keywords: Doppler velocity log; adaptive two-stage information filter; currents velocity; measurement noise covariance; ultra-short baseline system.