Survey of Terrain-Aided Navigation Methods for Underwater Vehicles
Gang Fan, Ya Zhang, Zehui Yuan, Furong Wang, Yixing Li, Xiujin Zhang, Jianing Li
Abstract
The prerequisite for underwater vehicles to accomplish various underwater tasks is to obtain real-time position information about themselves in the underwater environment using internal or external sensors, which is known as underwater positioning and navigation technology. This paper presents a general review of underwater vehicle positioning and navigation technology and illustrates the importance of underwater terrain-aided navigation technology. It also summarizes its general structure and describes the principles and functions of each component. The paper mainly analyzes various mainstream methods applied to underwater terrain-aided navigation, focuses on terrain suitability analysis and terrain matching algorithms, which play a central role in the analysis. Additionally, the research progress of terrain-aided navigation technology is described, and the research methods of terrain suitability analysis, terrain matching navigation, and the latest technology applications are compared. Some shortcomings of the current underwater terrain-aided navigation technology are presented, and future research directions are foreseen to provide a basis for subsequent research.