Starting Position of Underwater Terrain Aided Navigation Using Multi-information Fusion

In this paper, a multi-terrain aided position (TAP) points fusion position method (MTFP) is proposed to estimate the starting point of AUV terrain aided navigation (TAN). This method estimated the position of initial track segment and starting position of TAN by fusing multiple terrain matching information and dead reckoning information that obtain in the initial track segment of TAN, instead of the traditional single-point-based positioning. The effectiveness of the multiple terrain matching information fusion position (MTFP) is verified by playback simulation using ship borne measurement data. The simulation result shows that the maximum of positioning deviation of MTFP is reduced by 40.1% compared with terrain contour matching(TERCOM) positioning, the mean value of positioning deviation is reduced by 6.4%, and the standard deviation of positioning deviation is reduced by 33.6%, which shows that MTFP can effectively improve the accuracy and stability of TAP.