IEEE JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING, VOL. 32, NO.

2, APRIL 2007

327

Simulation of an Inertial Acoustic Navigation System

With Range Aiding for an Autonomous
Underwater Vehicle
Pan-Mook Lee, Member, IEEE, Bong-Huan Jun, Kihun Kim, Jihong Lee, Member, IEEE, Taro Aoki, and
Tadahiro Hyakudome

AbstractThis paper presents an integrated navigation system

for underwater vehicles to improve the performance of a conventional inertial acoustic navigation system by introducing range
measurement. The integrated navigation system is based on a
strapdown inertial navigation system (SDINS) accompanying
range sensor, Doppler velocity log (DVL), magnetic compass, and
depth sensor. Two measurement models of the range sensor are
derived and augmented to the inertial acoustic navigation system,
respectively. A multirate extended Kalman filter (EKF) is adopted
to propagate the error covariance with the inertial sensors, where
the filter updates the measurement errors and the error covariance
and corrects the system states when the external measurements
are available. This paper demonstrates the improvement on the
robustness and convergence of the integrated navigation system
with range aiding (RA). This paper used experimental data obtained from a rotating arm test with a fish model to simulate the
navigational performance. Strong points of the navigation system
are the elimination of initial position errors and the robustness on
the dropout of acoustic signals. The convergence speed and conditions of the initial error removal are examined with Monte Carlo
simulation. In addition, numerical simulations are conducted with
the six-degrees-of-freedom (6-DOF) equations of motion of an
autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) in a boustrophedon survey
mode to illustrate the effectiveness of the integrated navigation
system.
Index TermsAcoustic range sensor, Doppler velocity log
(DVL), inertial measurement unit (IMU), underwater navigation.

I. INTRODUCTION
TRAPDOWN inertial navigation systems (SDINSs) composed of three accelerometers and three gyros are fascinating sensors for the localization and navigation of underwater

Manuscript received February 18, 2006; accepted June 20, 2006. This
work was supported in part by the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries
(MOMAF) of Korea for the development of a deep-sea unmanned underwater
vehicle.
Associate Editor: L. L. Whitcomb.
P.-M. Lee, B.-H. Jun, and K. Kim are with the Maritime and Ocean Engineering Research Institute (MOERI), Korea Ocean Research and Development
Institute (KORDI), Daejeon 305-343, Korea (e-mail: pmlee@moeri.re.kr; bhjeon@moeri.re.kr; shaton@moeri.re.kr).
J. Lee is with the Mechatronics Engineering Department, Chungnam National
University, Daejeon 305-764, Korea (e-mail: jihong@cuvic.cnu.ac.kr).
T. Aoki and T. Hyakudome are with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth
Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Kanagawa 237-0061, Japan (e-mail:
aokit@jamstec.go.jp; hyaku@jamstec.go.jp).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JOE.2006.880585

vehicles. The errors of inertial measurement units (IMUs), however, increase with time elapse due to the inherent bias errors
of gyros and accelerometers. Inertial navigation systems (INSs)
give accurate position information for short-time periods though
bias error accumulates with time. This accumulation leads to
a very large position error requiring that additional sensors be
needed to compensate for the position errors of the INS [1].
Successful surface navigation systems have been developed
by integrating the global positioning system (GPS) with inertial
sensors. GPS is a good positioning sensor for air, land, and maritime vehicles, but it is available only at surface and air. Therefore, using GPS for underwater navigation is limited to the case
of shallow-water operations as a vehicle must surface regularly
to update their position information with GPS [2][6].
An INS, especially a directional gyro, cooperating with a
Doppler velocity log (DVL) is a successful navigation system
for underwater vehicles [7][15]. Dead-reckoning (DR) navigation is useful when it can get the absolute velocity and attitude
of underwater vehicles. Even if the gyro is highly precise, the
navigation system still needs additional reference sensors, such
as GPS, long baseline (LBL), ultrashort baseline (USBL), etc.,
when it is operated in long-term duration, because of the scale
effects of velocity sensors. Furthermore, the initial localization
of an underwater vehicle equipped with an INS, even accompanied by DVL, is difficult to set exactly without additional information. Acoustic positioning systems have no accumulative
error, while they do have high-frequency error and their update
rate is usually low. LBL use is also limited when it comes to
arctic undersea surveys because of difficulties in launching and
recovering the transponders under ice.
USBL is hard to use alone for the accurate navigation and
control of an underwater vehicle [16]. However, USBL is one
of localization sensors, and it can be applicable for underwater
navigation combined with complementary sensors [17]. Jouffroy and Opderbecke [18] developed a trajectory estimation
technique using gyro-Doppler and USBL measurements, which
consists of diffusion-based observers processing a whole trajectory segment.
Larsen [7], Beiter et al. [19], and Uliana [20] successfully
proposed a hybrid navigation system based on an inertial sensor
combined with acoustic velocity sensors. Whitcomb et al.
[8][12] proposed navigation systems integrating a DVL signal
to an LBL system for the enhancement of position accuracy.
Lee et al. [14], [15] proposed an inertial navigation algorithm
assisted by DVL, depth, and heading sensors. The IMU-DVL

0364-9059/$25.00 2007 IEEE

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Fig. 1. Navigational coordinates of the underwater vehicle with range measurement.

Fig. 2. Coordinates of an AUV and two range transducers.

navigation system gave slow drift in the estimated position

because of the integration of inherent errors from the sensors.
The error sources of the DVL-based INS are misalignment,
environmental noises, scale effects, and acceleration drifts,
which are directly reflected to the navigation performance.
Range measurement can give useful information to underwater navigation systems having simpler structures than LBLs.
Lasen [7] proposed a synthetic LBL navigation system using a
precise DR navigation system with range measurements from
a single transducer. Gadre and Stilwell [21] proposed underwater navigation systems by utilizing range measurements from
a single location, and showed observability of the method. Lee
et al. [22], [23] proposed hybrid underwater navigation systems based on a strapdown IMU accompanied by one or two
range sonar sensors as well as DVL, depth sensor, and magnetic
compass. The main ideas were to improve the performance of
the IMU-DVL navigation system with range aiding (RA) and
range-phase aiding (RPA).
This paper revises the integrated IMU-DVL navigation
system of an underwater vehicle with one range sensor [22],
and evaluates the navigation performance in the drift characteristics of estimation and the effect of initial position error on
the navigation system. We suppose that one or two transducers
are installed on an underwater vehicle [e.g., autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) or remotely operated vehicles (ROV)]
and measure the distance from the vehicle to an underwater
reference station, where the transducers have been installed,
as shown in Figs. 1 and 2. We can get phase measurement
as well as range by processing the time delay of the arrival
signal with the two transducers on the underwater vehicle.
Hereafter, the proposed navigation system with RA is called

IEEE JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING, VOL. 32, NO. 2, APRIL 2007

the IMU-DVL-RA navigation system, and the other system

with RPA is called the IMU-DVL-RPA. Two measurement
models for the integrated navigation system including the range
measurements are designed to implement an extended Kalman
filter (EKF) in multirate, where the order of the navigation
system states is 21 and 22, respectively. The multirate EKF
propagates the error covariance with the inertial sensors, and it
updates the measurement errors and the error covariance and
corrects the system states when the external measurements are
available.
Navigational simulations were conducted with experimental
data obtained by a rotating arm test of a small fish model in the
Ocean Engineering Basin (OEB) at the Maritime and Ocean Engineering Research Institute (MOERI), Korea Ocean Research
and Development Institute (KORDI), Daejeon, Korea. The fish
model was equipped with an IMU, a DVL including heading
sensor, and depth sensor, where we can receive the known motion and position data in the basin. Experimental simulations
were conducted with the IMU-DVL-RA navigation system. In
the navigation simulation, the range data is artificially generated. We confirm the effectiveness of the integrated navigation
system with the experimental data and show that the navigation
system reduces the estimation error by eliminating its growth
with time. This paper checks the convergence characteristics of
the integrated navigation system when the initial position error
exists. This paper also surveys the robustness of the navigation system over signal dropout from acoustic sensors. Finally,
numerical simulations were conducted with the 6-DOF equations of motion of an AUV in a boustrophedon survey mode
to demonstrate the effectiveness of the integrated navigation
system with RA.
II. IMU-DVL NAVIGATION WITH RA
A. Navigation Equation of SDINS
For an SDINS, the navigation equation of a vehicle can be obtained with the differential equations from the body frame of the
inertial sensors on board the vehicle calculating the frame rotation. A navigation frame mechanism, earthcenterearth- fixed
reference coordinate, is generally used when underwater vehiis excles maneuver around the earth. The ground speed
pressed in the navigation coordinates of this mechanism. The
with respect to the navigation axes can be
rate of change of
found in terms of its rate of change in the inertial axes as follows
[1], [15]:
(1)
where
(2)
(3)
(4)
The variables and represent the latitude and the longiand
are velocity components of the vetude, and
hicle with respect to the navigation coordinates in the north,
east, and downward directions of the Earth, respectively.
is the Earths rate with respect to the inertial frame, and is

LEE et al.: SIMULATION OF AN INERTIAL ACOUSTIC NAVIGATION SYSTEM WITH RA FOR AN AUV

the Earths rotation rate.

is the turn rate of the navigation
and
are the
frame with respect to the Earth, and
in the north, east, and downward direction,
components of
respectively.
is the direction cosine matrix between the navis the external
igation coordinate and the body coordinate.
is
acceleration acted to the vehicle in the body frame, while
the gravitational acceleration in the navigation coordinate. The
superscript and denote the components described in the navigation coordinate and the body coordinate, respectively.
When we navigate the vehicle with respect to the body frame,
the turning rate vector of the vehicle takes the following form
:
with the direction cosine matrix
(5)
where
is a skew-symmetric matrix described by the gyro
measurement
and
is a skew-symmetric matrix comand
[1].
posed of
For the SDINS, the rates of change in latitude and longitude
can be expressed in terms of a meridian radius of curvature
and a transverse radius of curvature
of the Earth as follows:
(6)
where
[1].
and represent the mean radius of the Earth, the
major eccentricity of the Earth, and the depth under the sea surface, respectively. The change rate of depth can be expressed as
(7)
In this paper, a perturbation method is used to derive the error
equation of the SDINS algorithm. The perturbation method analyzes the navigation system by defining the error as the difference between the estimated and true values. For a nonlinear
system, this method can be applied when the error is small. Assuming the errors exist in the position, velocity, and attitude

329

in (1)(7), the perturbation induces the differential equations

(8)(10), as shown at the bottom of the page.
is the attitude error vector:
Here,
and
are the attitude errors of the vehicle with
respect to the navigation coordinate in the north, east, and
downward direction, respectively. denotes the variation of the
and
. By
components. Note
taking the variation for the turn rates (3) and (4), we can derive
the additional variation equations (11)(14), as shown at the
bottom of the page.
Using (8)(14), we can formulate an error model of the
SDINS for the navigation of an underwater vehicle with RA.
The quaternion attitude representation is adopted to calculate
in the navigation algorithm.
the direction cosine matrix
B. Error Model of Sensors
The errors of inertial sensors are mostly measurement errors,
acceleration-dependent biases, scale factor errors, nonlinearity,
axis misalignment, and gyro sensitivity to the force applied.
Various compensation techniques are used to reduce the errors
through alignment, calibration, and initialization in the factory
and in field online calibration [1], [24]. For example, Vik and
Fossen [5] have modeled an IMU with scale factor errors, biases, and Gaussian white noise signals.
The errors of inertial sensors and gyros of an SDINS can generally be modeled as a combination of random bias and random
noise [1]. Some portions of instrumentation error are best represented as a constant but unknown random variable [24]. In this
paper, we assume that the major error of the SDINS is a random
walk bias error and Gaussian random noise. The output errors
and
can be expressed with
of accelerometers and gyros
the summation of random walk bias and white noise vectors as
(15)
(16)

(8)

(9)
(10)

(11)

(12)

(13)
(14)

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IEEE JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING, VOL. 32, NO. 2, APRIL 2007

where the measurement errors

and
are assumed
Gaussian white noises that have zero mean and the error variand
, respectively. The unknown constants and
ances
are modeled as [24]

(17)
(18)
Here, the model states that the variables and show random
walk process and have zero initial values and the variances
and
, respectively.
The auxiliary navigation sensors, that is, the depth sensor,
DVL, and the magnetic compass, are good complementary sensors for the inertial sensors. This paper modeled the errors of
the sensors as the summation of random constants and white
noises. We assumed that the random constants of the biases are
unknown but the variances of the initial values are known.
Then, we can express the differences of the estimates from
the SDINS and the measured values from the depth, DVL, and
heading sensors as follows:
(19)
(20)
(21)
is the bias error of the depth sensor,
is the bias
where
represents the heading bias, denotes the
error of the DVL,
Gaussian white noise, and its subscripts, and
, and
denote each component of the measurements. ^ denotes the estimated value. The variance of the depth, the DVL, and the
, and
, respectively.
heading sensors are
In (20),
means the estimated direction cosine related with
that is found as
the true
(22)
where
errors

is a skew symmetric matrix composed of the attitude

[1].

This paper introduces additional measurement of the range to

improve the navigation performance of the IMU-DVL navigation system. We suppose that a transducer installed on the underwater vehicle sends an interrogation signal and a transponder
installed at a known reference station responds after receiving
the interrogation signal. The vehicle can measure the range
from the vehicle to the reference station by calculating the travel
time. Fig. 1 shows the coordinates of the vehicle.
We can estimate the range with the navigation system, however, this estimate will include estimation error . The estimation error is induced by the accumulation of inertial sensor error
and the inaccuracy of the DVL, depth, and heading measurealso has
ment. On the other hand, the measured range
measurement errors. We assume that the measurement error is
plus random noise.
also composed of deterministic bias error
The bias error is mainly induced by incorrect sound speed, and
by the AUVs motion between transmitting and receiving the
acoustic signal of the range transducers. Then, we can derive
the difference between the estimated distance and the measured

(23)
and
and are the relative
where
positions of the vehicle from the reference station in the global
coordinates. In the range measurement, we can consider that one
is the position error caused
of the sources of the bias error
by the vehicles motion while the acoustic signal travels. The
.
variance of the random noise is defined as
C. IMU-DVL-RA Navigation Model
The IMU-DVL navigation system with RA, called
IMU-DVL-RA navigation, can be modeled as
(24)
where (25)(27), shown at the bottom of the page, hold.
given in the
The components of the system matrix
Appendix are the time-varying system matrix that are derived
from the differential equations of the SDINS (8)(10) and
has 21 error
the variation (11)(14). The state variable
states including the position errors, velocity errors, error of
attitude and heading angles, the bias errors of accelerometers,
gyros, range, depth, DVL, and heading. The system error

(25)
(26)

(27)

LEE et al.: SIMULATION OF AN INERTIAL ACOUSTIC NAVIGATION SYSTEM WITH RA FOR AN AUV

represents the vector of the Gaussian white random noise and

the random walk error of accelerometers and gyros

331

available. The inertial system errors remain unchanged and the

filter propagates the error covariance matrix as [1]:
(35)

(28)
.
which have mean zero and the error variance matrix
For digital implementation, we convert the system equation
to a discrete model with the sampling rate
(29)
and
.
where
The measurements of range, heading, depth, and velocities
provided by the external sensors constitute the Kalman filter
may be
measurement. The measurement difference at time
expressed in terms of the error state variables as
(30)
where (31)(34), shown at the bottom of the page, hold, and
denotes the skew symmetric matrix of the velocity.
Note that the sampling rate of the external measurement is
different from the high-frequency rate of the SDINS. Therefore, the error covariance of the discrete time measurement is
for the external measurement rate . Here, the
.
measurement error variance is
In addition, we note that the navigation (29) and the measurement (30) are observable having full column rank 21 over the ob. When the system state
servability matrix of the pair
is observable, it is possible to estimate the state in a minimum
of discrete-time steps, however, stability and robustness are
not usually guaranteed. Error convergence and robustness will
be discussed in the following sections.
The system matrix (26) is nonlinear and time varying. For
the underwater navigation algorithm, therefore, we implement
an EKF which has optimal performance for linear systems and
ad hoc nonlinear systems. We implemented the EKF [25] with
the system error model (29) and the measurement model (30).
The filter is multirate because of the different sample rates, and
this is achieved in two steps.
The dynamic system errors propagate forward with a highfrequency sample rate when the external measurements are un-

(36)
denotes the expected value of the covariance matrix at
predicted at time . The system integrates the signals
time
from the inertial sensors and calculates the attitude, velocity, and
position of the vehicle with the previous state errors.
When the external measurements are acquired, we can calculate the Kalman filter gain, update the error covariance matrix,
and estimate the system state errors. The estimates of the errors
of the navigation system states are derived using the measurement difference and the Kalman filter gain as follows:
(37)
The Kalman filter gain is calculated and the error covariance
matrix is updated according to

(38)
(39)
Fig. 3 depicts the schematic of the multirate EKF for the inertial acoustic navigation system with RA, namely, the IMUDVL-RA navigation system.
III. IMU-DVL NAVIGATION WITH RPA
This section presents an inertial acoustic navigation system
with range and phasing aiding. We assume that two range transand ,
ducers are installed on the upper side of an AUV,
respectively, and that a transponder is installed at a reference
station moored on the seafloor as shown in Fig. 2. The range
transmits an interrogation and the transponder at
transducer
responds after receiving the interrogathe reference station
tion signal. By receiving the response signal and calculating the
arrival time differences of the two range transducers, we can
measure the distance and the incident angle of the AUV
from the station.
in global
We suppose that the AUV is located at
is installed at
coordinate, and that the range transducer

(31)

(32)
(33)

(34)

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IEEE JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING, VOL. 32, NO. 2, APRIL 2007

from the center of the AUV in the body

frame. Then, we can calculate s position in the global frame
from
, where
, and
are

(40)
is the th row and th column component of
.
and
and the range
The distance between the reference station
is
. If the range transtransducer
ducer is installed at the rear of the AUV separated by distance
from
along the -axis as depicted in Fig. 2, we can denote
. Then, the incident angle can be de, where
fined with
and is confined to
. For simple notation, let
and
; then, the
incident angle is reduced to
(41)
This section derives a measurement error model for the range
and phase of the vehicle. Let
represent the bias error and
represent the random error of the range transducer . As
and
can be
in the previous section, the difference of
reduced to the first order as
(42)
and . This is the same
using the partial derivatives with
form as (23).
The estimated incident angle also includes estimation error
due to the error of the estimated position and attitude of the
AUV in a navigation system. The estimated incident angle can
where is the true incident angle.
be modeled as
The incident angle measurement also includes bias error and
random error similar to the range measurement model. Let
represent the bias error and
represent the random error of
the incident angle. Then, the measured incident angle can be
.
modeled as
can be obtained
The estimation error of the incident angle
and .
using (40) and (41) and partial derivatives with
The difference of and
is obtained to first order as

(43)
where

The difference of the incident angle (43) can be augmented to

the measurement equation of the navigation system.
If the AUV is far off from the reference station, then
and we can measure the incident angle with the arrival time
difference of the two range transducers as follows:
(44)
It is noted that the noise
is dependent on the incident angle
because is the inverse cosine function of the ratio of the range
difference.
We can derive the error model for the navigational system of
the SDINS with range and phase aiding, IMU-DVL-RPA navigation. Augmenting the bias error terms for the range and incident angle additionally, the error model of the navigation equation is derived as follows:
(45)
where (46), shown at the bottom of the page, holds.
The state variable
has 22 error states:
is the bias
and
is the bias error of the
error of the range transducer
incident angle. The others are the same as (25). The system
is the noise of the accelerometers and gyros, which
error
. The system matrices
has mean zero and error covariance
and
have the same structure with
and
,
respectively, but the system order is different.
The measurements (19)(21), (42), and (43) of range, incident angle, depth, velocities, and heading are provided by the
external sensors and constitute the Kalman filter measurement.
may be expressed in
The measurement difference at time
terms of the error state variables as follows:
(47)
where (48)(50), shown at the bottom of the next page, hold,
and
denotes the measurement noise and the subscripts
denote each measurement.
We note that the navigation system IMU-DVL-RPA is observable having full rank 22 over the observability matrix. On
the other hand, the error variance of the incident angle is not
constant. As shown in (45), the phase error variance depends
on the incident angle even if the error variance of the range difference is constant. In addition, the measurement is noisy when
the incident angle is near to zero or . It is necessary to increase

(46)

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333

Fig. 4. Rotating arm test setup with an artificial fish model equipped with IMU,
DVL, and depth sensor.

Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of the multirate EKF of the inertial acoustic navigation with RA.

the measurement error variance of the incident angle when the

estimate of incident angle is near to zero or .
After converting (47) into a discrete system, we can implement the EKF with the discrete system error model and the
measurement model (47), the same as in the previous navigation
system DVL-IMU-RA. The system errors propagate forward
with the high-frequency sampling rate when the external measurements are unavailable. When the external measurements
are acquired, the navigation system calculates the Kalman filter
gain, updates the error covariance matrix, and estimates the
system state errors.
IV. SIMULATION WITH ROTATING ARM EXPERIMENT
A. Navigation Sensors and Rotating Arm Experiment
A rotating arm experiment was performed to get the known
motion, position, and inertial data of an underwater vehicle, and

to simulate the IMU-DVL-RA navigation system with the measured data. Experiments were performed in the OEB of MOERI,
.
KORDI, of which the size is 50 30 3.5 m in
An artificial small fish was attached to a rotating arm via a vertical strut so that it could make exact circular motions at various
speeds. The rotating arm was fixed at the center of the carriage
moving over the OEB. Its total length is 10 m and the fish model
was installed under the arm 8.0 m from the rotating center. Fig. 4
shows the rotating arm and the fish.
An IMU, a DVL, and a depth sensor were installed inside
the fish model. The inertial sensor used for the experiment is a
Honeywell IMU, HG1700AG11 [26]. It consists of three ring
laser gyros and three accelerometers of the resonant beam type.
The IMU has good performance for inertial measurements: the
bias, random noise, velocity random walk of the accelerometers
are 1 mg, 0.8 ft/s , 0.065 ft/s h, respectively, and the bias,
random noises, angular random walk of the gyros are 1 /h, 8
h, respectively. The output frequency is 100
mrad/s, 0.125
Hz. The DVL is a workhorse navigator (WHN) 300 from RD
Instruments, Inc., Poway, CA [27] and its operating frequency
is 300 kHz. It has four transducers in the Janus configuration
that make it possible to measure three directional velocities. It
has excellent performance of which the accuracy is 3 mm/s at
1-m/s vehicle speed and the maximum sample rate is 7 Hz. The
DVL includes a magnetic compass and a tilt sensor to measure
heading, roll, and pitch.

(48)

(49)

(50)

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TABLE I
SENSOR MODEL IN THE IMU-DVL NAVIGATION SYSTEM
WITH RANGE MEASUREMENT

The rotating experiment was performed for 23 min with constant speed of the fish at 0.5 m/s, and the sampling rate of the
IMU and the DVL at 100 and 2 Hz, respectively. The higher
sample frequency is desired to get better precision. Since the
experiment was conducted in the rectangular basin OEB, the
walls and bottom of the basin reflected the acoustic signals well.
Therefore, we have fixed the DVL sample rate at 2 Hz to get
stable data. During the first 20 s, the fish was stationary at the
initial position for the navigation system to process the initial
alignment of the inertial sensors. After 20 s, its rotating speed
was gradually increased until the fish speed reached 0.5 m/s.
As the speed of the vehicle increased, the noise level of the
gyros and the accelerometers from the IMU sensor increased
due to the vortex-induced vibration around the fish and the submerged parts of the strut. The rotating arm and the strut were
made of steel, but their lengths were long, therefore, it was hard
to make pure motions without vibratory random noise from the
fish connected to the flexible structure. We selected the measurement error variances of the gyros and the accelerometers from
the experiment as shown in Table I.
The measured heading signal showed distorted change during
the continuous rotation because of the magnetic fields variation
around the steel-structured carriage of the basin. The maximum
difference was 15 in heading angle. The magnetic compass
provides a heading reference with 0.1 accuracy but it is apt to
be contaminated by nearby magnetic bodies. Bias of the heading
sensor was set to 10 and bias of a depth sensor to 0.5 m. Tilt angles obtained from the DVL were inclined due to the centrifugal
force. The DVL signal also showed noisy data due to the vibratory motion of the fish and the attitude errors. We selected the
DVL error variances from the experiment as shown in Table I.
We simulated the inertial acoustic navigation with the error
variances of the sensors. Table I also depicts the bias errors and
random noises of the other sensors to simulate the navigation
system. The variances of each sensor are bigger than the specification of the sensor in factory.
The range sonar can measure the distance without bias error
in the stationary condition. In the real world, however, the bias
error of the range measurement will increase due to the motion
of the vehicle and environmental noise. We suppose the sample
rate of the range sensor is two samples per second. Since the
speed of the vehicle is 0.5 m/s and the time interval of the range
signal is 0.5 s, we conservatively set the bias error of the range
measurement to 0.25 m root mean square (rms) and the random
errors to 0.5 m rms.

Fig. 5. Estimated position and navigation errors with the IMU-DVL navigation
system excluding range measurement. (a) Estimated position in - plane.
(b) Estimation errors in - plane and 3-D space.

XY

XY

In this paper, the range data was generated with an artificial

range measurement sensor, where the reference in the global
coordinate was located at ( 30.0, 30.0, 10.0) m from the initial
position (0.0, 0.0, 0.0) of the fish model. After generating the
constant bias errors and random noises for the range, the measurement range was obtained by adding them to the true range
of the vehicle.
B. IMU-DVL Navigation
Before simulating the proposed navigation algorithm, the
conventional IMU-DVL navigation system [15] was tested to
compare the navigation performance. Fig. 5 shows the estimated position in the global coordinate, - plane and the
navigation error for the conventional navigation system. The
navigation system updated the error covariance and revised
the state variables using 2-Hz measurement signals from the
DVL, magnetic compass, and depth sensor. The IMU-DVL
navigation system corrected the error covariance and updated
the system state variables whenever the external measurements
were obtained.
It is shown that the estimated error of the inertial-Doppler
hybrid navigation system is confined to within 1.3 m position
errors during the 23 min of a circular motion. However, the estimation errors of the navigation system oscillate as time elapses,
where the oscillatory drift is mainly caused by the errors of the

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Fig. 6. Estimation errors in

335

X -Y plane with the conventional DR method.

Fig. 8. Estimated position errors of the fish with the IMU-DVL-RA navigation
system.

Fig. 7. Estimation errors in

system.

X -Y

plane with the IMU-DVL-RA navigation

accelerometers in the IMU [1]. While the vertical position estimation is directly corrected by the measured depth, the horizontal positions are indirectly updated with the DVL information. The DVL corrects the velocity so that the navigation
system includes integral effect of the bias error and the scale
effects of the velocity in the navigation algorithm. More precise DVL and IMU measurement are required to reduce the drift
of the navigation system, but the increment of the estimation
error with time elapse is unavoidable without eternal position
correction.
C. DR Navigation
DR navigation was performed to compare the performance
of the IMU-DVL and the IMU-DVL-RA navigation systems.
The DR navigation estimates position by integrating the measured velocity after transforming the measured velocity to the
navigation coordinates. Integration was performed with Eulers
method at every DVL sampling time, which is 0.5 s in this experiment. Fig. 6 shows the estimation error of the vehicle with the
DR navigation. The result indicates very similar performance to
the conventional IMU-DVL navigation system. Therefore, the
DR navigation is also a good navigation method when we get
exact initial position and can measure absolute velocity with the
DVL. On the other hand, the performance of the DR navigation
system can only be improved with a higher sample rate of the
DVL, such as 5 Hz.
D. IMU-DVL-RA Navigation
Simulation of the IMU-DVL-RA navigation system was performed. The error variance matrices of the system model and the
measurement model were defined with the standard deviations

of the sensors shown in Table I. The relative distance of the vehicle to the reference station was estimated using the estimated
position whenever the vehicle received the range information,
and it is updated into the measurement matrix (30). Every 0.5 s,
the navigational states and parameters in (29) were updated and
corrected with the range data. We updated the navigational states
and parameters using range information and DVL data at the
same time to meet the convenience of simulation, however, it is
not necessary to synchronize the two data acquisition systems.
Fig. 7 depicts the tracking errors of the IMU-DVL-RA navigation system. The navigation system with RA finely estimates
the position of the underwater vehicle in general. The position
error is increased due to the bias error of the range measurement. The estimation error of the proposed navigation system
with range measurement does not increase as time passes and
the error is less than 1.1 m along the whole simulation time. The
horizontal position error of the IMU-DVL navigation system assisted by the range information is less than the error of the conventional IMU-DVL and the DR navigation systems.
The accuracy of the IMU-DVL-RA navigation is independent
of time elapse. The strong point of the navigation with RA is that
it is able to eliminate the error accumulation of the conventional
IMU-DVL navigation system, which is unavoidable for conventional inertial acoustic navigation systems.
Note that the error slightly increased at around 1000 s. This
was caused by the estimation drift along the tangential line of a
circle centered at the reference station. Here, we define the circle
as range circle, of which the radius is the horizontal distance
between the reference station and the vehicle projected into the
- plane. In this case, the range circle is centered at ( 30, 30,
0) and its radius is 30 2 m. After the estimated position of the
vehicle reaches a point on the range circle, the range information does not affect the error correction in the navigation algorithm any more. This phenomenon is obvious especially when
the vehicle is in a stationary condition or moves along the range
circle. Sometimes it may generate wrong correction data in these
conditions.

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Fig. 9. Estimated position with the IMU-DVL-RA navigation system under 1-min dropout of DVL and range.

Fig. 8 shows the - planar motion of the estimation error in

large. The estimation error drifts along the tangential line. Since
the vehicle moves in rotation and changes position in this simulation, the tangential drift cannot grow due to the range change
and the navigation system correct estimate of the position towards reducing the estimation error. In a stationary condition,
the correction mechanism works similarly as well, however, the
IMU-DVL-RA navigation system shows errors in the estimated
position. The estimation error of IMU-DVL-RA increases along
the range circle with the amount of the projected components to
the tangential line of the range circle among the estimation error
of the IMU-DVL navigation system.
E. IMU-DVL-RA Navigation With Acoustic Signal Dropout
Acoustic equipment is apt to lose reception signals due to environmental noises and to receiving wrong data caused by unstructured disturbances and multipath responses of acoustic signals. This section considers practical problems such as outliers,
outages, and dropouts of signals. These phenomena can lead to
catastrophic effects in the navigation system with complementary acoustic sensors.
We can make a watch circle and remove the outliers of the
range data when it shows abrupt change in range measurement
compared to the stochastic characteristics of the sensor and vehicle dynamics. We can make another filter for the DVL to get
rid of velocity outliers as well. However, we cannot eliminate
the influence of the outages and dropouts from the filter.
In this section, we simulate the influence of intermittent
outliers and short-duration dropouts of the range sensor and
the DVL in the integrated navigation system IMU-DVL-RA.

When dropouts and/or outliers occur, we design the navigation

system to discard the unreliable data and to keep the old data
in its memory. The IMU-DVL-RA navigation system changes
the error variances of the failed sensors to reduce the influence
of the wrong signals when sequential failures occur in the
range sensor or the DVL. In cases when two or more sequential
failures happen, in this paper, we select the noise level of the
DVL and the range sensor as 10 m/s and 50 m, respectively,
and
than
which are 10 000 times larger variances
the normal ones. If we use the same variances under dropout
conditions, the navigation filter can make the system unstable.
The error variances are returned to their original values after
recovering the acoustic signals.
Fig. 9 shows the - plane trajectory of the integrated navigation system IMU-DVL-RA for a 1-min dropout. The dropouts
of the DVL and the range sonar simultaneously happen at 600 s
(o mark) for 60 s, and the sensors recover the measurements
after 660 s (x mark). When the dropout occurs, the range and
velocity data are fixed to their previous normal values and the
navigation system increases the failed DVL and range components among the covariance matrix in (36). During the dropout,
IMU-DVL-RA estimates the position with only the IMU accompanying nonacoustic measurements of depth and heading.
The navigation system estimates the wrong position that drifts
along the range circle as shown in Fig. 9, because the stored
range is not updated. The direction and magnitude of the drift
depends on the system states before the dropout. After resuming
the measurements, IMU-DVL-RA compensates the range and
velocity errors with the recovered error variances. The navigation system can give true trajectory within 110 s after return
from the dropout.

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Fig. 10. Estimated position with the IMU-DVL-RA navigation system under 2-min dropout of DVL and range.

Fig. 11. Estimated position errors with the IMU-DVL-RA navigation system when dropout occurs.

Fig. 10 shows the - plane trajectory for the 2-min

dropout. The drift along the range circle is larger than the
previous one and the direction is variable depending on
the heading angle of the AUV. After resuming the measurements, the navigation system compensates the range
and velocity errors and exponentially converges to the true

trajectory. In this simulation with the 2-min dropout, however, the position error is still 5 m after 6 min of resuming
the acoustic signals. For the application with the navigation system over the guidance and control of AUVs, it is
needed to keep the stabilizing time zone for a long time
when a long-duration dropout, longer than 1 min, happens.

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Fig. 13. Estimated position of the IMU-DVL-RA navigation system with initial
position error ( 3.7884, 9.1459, 0.0).

than 5-s dropouts, or outliers of the acoustic signal without degrading the navigational performance. On the other hand, for
the 10-s dropout, the error is 5.65 m and it takes 110 s to converge within the 1.0-m errors. It also takes 110 s to recover the
trajectory for the 1-min dropout. The 30-s dropout shows similar result with the 1-min dropout. IMU-DVL-RA suffered from
1 min or less dropout and needs two more minutes to recover
the true trajectory.
V. EFFECTS ON INITIAL LOCALIZATION ERROR
Initial localization is required to get exact global position
when underwater vehicles begin navigation. Special techniques,
equipment, and times are required for the initialization of the
vehicle. The IMU-DVL-RA navigation system can regulate
the initial positioning error with range information. This paper
checks the sensitivity of IMU-DVL-RA to initial position errors
and convergence characteristics by Monte Carlo simulation.
To verify the convergence and stability of IMU-DVL-RA with
initial position error in local and global areas, we specify two
groups: the initial errors are small around the true position, and
the other errors are large (even located at the other side of the
reference station).
A. Convergence of Initial Errors Around True Position

Fig. 12. Estimated results of the IMU-DVL-RA navigation system with initial
position error ( 7.0, 7.0, 0.0). (a) Estimated position. (b) Trajectory of the position error. (c) Estimated position error.

Otherwise, it is desirable to reset the position with external

position tracking devices.
Fig. 11 shows the convergence trend of the errors for the various durations of dropout. For the 5-s dropout, the error is 2.0 m
and it takes 5 s to converge 1.0-m error bound. IMU-DVL-RA
can give in-flight self-alignment for the short-time dropout, less

Eleven points, having the same range 9.90 m apart from the
origin in - plane are selected to make clear comparisons
with their convergence characteristics. Fig. 12 shows the navigation results when the initial position error of the vehicle is
( 7.0, 7.0, 0.0) relative to the true position, which is located on
the parallel direction to reference points being 0.0 . Fig. 12(a)
shows the estimated trajectory of the vehicle, Fig. 12(b) the position error, and Fig. 12(c) the magnitude of the error. The initial
error exponentially converges to zero and tracks the true trajectory of the rotational motion of the vehicle. The range information corrects the 3-D position of IMU-DVL-RA augmented with
a depth sensor. The navigation system is strongly robust to the

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339

TABLE II
INITIALLY ESTIMATED POSITIONS OF THE VEHICLE

Fig. 14. Trajectories of the estimation errors with initial position errors.

Fig. 15. Convergence rates of the position error of the vehicle with initial
errors.

The convergence characteristics are similar to the four quadratic

phases. All the initial position errors exponentially converge to
the range circle in the radial direction and slowly decrease the
errors along the tangential line of the range circle. The radial
position errors converge to zero within 2 min. Along the range
circle, the convergence speed of the estimation error depends
on the magnitude of the distance to the true position. As the
error along the tangential direction is larger, the converging time
becomes longer. It takes a maximum of 20 min to converge with
a 2.0-m position error when the initial error is about 10 m in
all directions. There is a slow drift of the estimate near the true
position along the tangential direction of the range circle, which
is caused by the uncertainties of the inertial sensors.
From the simulation with IMU-DVL-RA, therefore, the performance of the conventional IMU-DVL navigation system can
be improved by introducing range measurements and the navigation system can estimate the true position having initial position error. Thus, we can operate underwater vehicles by using
the inertial acoustic navigation system IMU-DVL-RA without
a special initialization process.
B. Convergence of Large Initial Errors

initial position error of the vehicle, where the offset error converges into 1.0-m spherical error radius within 2 min.
Fig. 13 shows the estimated trajectory when the initial position error of the vehicle is ( 3.7884, 9.1459, 0.0) in relative,
which is located on the direction with 22.5 counterclockwise.
The initial error exponentially converges to the range circle, and
then slowly converges to the true position. While the vehicle
moves in rotation, the range information corrects the position
error to zero along the tangential direction of the range circle.
The navigation system is also robust to the initial position error
of the vehicle, and the offset error converges into 1.0 m after
7 min.
Fig. 14 shows the position error trajectories from the 11 initial
error points around the true position, and Fig. 15 depicts the
convergence rates of the initial position errors in the first phase.

This section surveys the effect of IMU-DVL-RA on large

initial position errors. We suppose that the vehicle is located
at
and the reference station is
at (0, 0, 0). Twelve estimated positions
are arbitrarily
selected around the reference station as shown in Table II.
Those positions are representative of all the directions against
the reference station, where are the opposite side of the
true position against the reference station. Radial errors are
selected randomly to demonstrate the effectiveness of the range
measurement.
Note that we derive the navigation error equation under the
small variation assumption in Section II. Thus, we essentially
need initialization process for the inertial sensors (i.e., gyros
and accelerations). When the inertial errors are large, the system
cannot estimate the true position and attitude. Before starting
the IMU-DVL-RA, we have to conduct the IMU initialization:

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Fig. 16. Estimated position of the IMU-DVL-RA navigation system with the
initial position P ( 12.0, 24.0, 10.0) over the reference station (0.0, 0.0, 0.0):
the true position of the fish is (30.0, 30.0, 10.0).

navigation, the error is still about 22 m, but the position error

decreases in general.
Fig. 17 depicts the integrated trajectories of estimation of the
IMU-DVL-RA for the initial position errors . All the
position errors directly reach the range circle with their radial
direction toward the reference station, and converge to the true
position along the tangential line of the range circle.
When the initial estimation is on the opposite side of the reference station at or , theoretically, the navigation system just
finds the imaginary position for a stationary vehicle and stays at
that position. In this simulation, since the vehicle continuously
moves along a circle and changes position, IMU-DVL-RA updates the estimate with the range information and can break out
from the imaginary position. The estimation also converges to
the true position along the range circle after coming out from
the wrong position. The convergence speed gradually decreases
as the estimation approaches the true position.
is on the reference station,
When the initial estimation
the initial radial direction to the range circle depends on the
moving direction of the vehicle. In this simulation, the initial
moving direction is parallel with the range circle, so that the position change is insensitive to the range variation of the INUDVL-RA. When the navigation system senses the range mismatching caused by the initial position error, the vehicle is on
the other position. The estimation moves toward the range circle
where it is noticeable on the range mismatching.
The convergence rate is relatively high at the long distance
from the true position. On the other hand, larger oscillation of
the estimation occurs in the long-distance error along the range
circle. Considering the amount of error on the range circle and
the convergence speed, we expect the estimation of the IMUDVL-RA to converge to the true position after a 1-h navigation
over any erroneous initial position.
C. Sensitivity of Range Distance

Fig. 17. Trajectories of the position errors with the IMU-DVL-RA navigation
system when the initial location of the fish is (30, 30, 10).

finding heading angle, attitude, latitude, and velocity. On the

other hand, position can be compensated by the range measurement externally without losing the assumption of the small variation. Even for the large initial errors in position, IMU-DVL-RA
can compensate the error by using the range information after
knowing the inertial information.
Fig. 16 shows the trajectory of the estimated position of the
vehicle with the IMU-DVL-RA navigation system for the
initial erroneous position. In the early stage of the navigation,
the estimated position error grows up to the range circle along
its radial direction with the initial orientation. After reaching the
range circle, the estimation gradually slides to the true position
along the tangential line of the range circle, where the circular
motion is heavily distorted due to the oscillation of the estimated
position. As the estimated position approaches to the true position, the amount of the oscillation decreases. After 23 min of

This paper examines how the distance between the vehicle

and the reference station affects the convergence characteristics
for initial position errors with the IMU-DVL-RA. Two additional simulations are conducted with half and double the range
of the previous one.
For the first case study, we suppose that the vehicle is at
(15, 15, 5) and the reference station is at the same origin.

points depicted in Table II are half the distance from

the reference station and have the same orientations and radial
error ratios of . For the first case study, we suppose that
the vehicle is at (60, 60, 20) and the reference station is at the
points in
same position. Similar to the half-range case,
Table II are double distance from the reference station and have
the same orientations and radial error ratios of . The
same motion data of the rotating arm experiment and the same
characteristics of the range sensor are used in these simulations
of the IMU-DVL-RA. Figs. 18 and 19 show the navigational
results for half and double the range of the previous one,
respectively.
and
converge
In Fig. 18, all the initial errors including
to the true position with a 2-m error bound for a 23-min navigation. The convergence speed is also better than the previous
one. A relatively large circular motion can reduce the drift along

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341

Fig. 18. Trajectories of the position errors with the IMU-DVL-RA navigation
system when the initial location of the fish is (15, 15, 5).

Fig. 20. Simulation results with a conventional DR navigation.

Therefore, the IMU-DVL-RA navigation system can reduce

initial position errors, and it can localize the underwater vehicle
to the true position with a known reference station.
VI. NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF AUV NAVIGATION
Fig. 19. Trajectories of the position errors with the IMU-DVL-RA navigation
system when the initial location of the fish is (60, 60, 20).

the range circle around the true position and improve the convergence rate. As the vehicle operates near the reference station,
the range sensor becomes more effective for the initial position
errors.
In Fig. 19, effectiveness of the range sensor can be found in
general; however, almost all the initial position errors are still
converging to the true position and it takes a longer time than
cases due to the larger range. The opposite side posithe
tions
and
are stagnated around the imaginary point of the
shows a large drift of 5 m after
true position. Furthermore,
converging to the true position. As the range becomes larger,
the range circle proportionally increases and the estimated position near true position becomes insensitive for the tangential
variation along the range circle. A larger circular motion of the
vehicle is required to reduce the drift of the estimated position
and to avoid stagnation around the opposite side area.

A. IMU-DVL-RA With an AUV Dynamic Model

Numerical simulation was performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the IMU-DVL-RA and its application to AUVs.
A 6-DOF mathematical model of the AUV [28], [29] was used
to generate accelerations, angular velocities, directional velocities, heading angle, depth, and range data. The vehicle was stationary at first at the center of the navigation coordinate and went
forward to the north. We supposed that the AUV moved in a
lawn-mowing survey mode and changed depth 5 m in the middle
of the straight courses with a forward speed at 3.0 kn. The vehicle changed depth 5 m at 30, 150, 270, and 390 second lapse,
and changed heading at 100, 120, 230, 250, 340, and 360 time
lapse to generate a boustrophedon trajectory. Depth and heading
controls were performed with a linear quadratic (LQ) controller.
Total simulation time was 500 s.
The sample rate of the IMU and the DVL was 100 and 2 Hz,
respectively, for the rotating arm experiment. The sample rate
of the range sonar was two samples per second. For range data
generation, we supposed that the reference station was located

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Fig. 21. Estimation error with the IMU-DVL-RA navigation system.

IEEE JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING, VOL. 32, NO. 2, APRIL 2007

Fig. 23. Estimated position error of IMU-DVL-RPA navigation system with

the water-track relative velocity measurement.

Fig. 21 shows the results of the IMU-DVL-RA navigation

system, where the moving path of the AUV is the dotted line
and the estimated position is the solid line, which is very similar
to those of the DR navigation. The IMU-DVL-RA navigation
system finely estimates the position of the AUV in general. The
position error is increased only when the AUV changes depth
5 m after 30-s lapse, where lateral bias is shown at this time
due to the range variation caused by the depth change. After
updating the range, the IMU-DVL-RA navigation system keeps
the error within 1.2 m evenly.
When we cannot set the initial position of the vehicle exactly, the DVL-IMU-RA navigation system can regulate the initial error with the range information. On the other hand, the
DR navigation cannot exclude the error and the position of the
vehicle is biased all the way. Fig. 22 shows the results of the
IMU-DVL-RA navigation system of the vehicle with the initial
error. The IMU-DVL-RA navigation system updates the range
information and corrects the position. Fig. 22(a) shows the trajectories of the AUV in the - plane. In this simulation, the
initial error converges within 2 m after 175 s and within 1.0 m
after 400 s as shown in Fig. 22(b).
The strong point of the IMU-DVL-RA navigation system is
that it is able to eliminate the initial position error and the error
accumulation of the conventional inertial acoustic navigation
system, which is unavoidable for the accelerometer and gyro
bias as well as scale effect of DVL.
Fig. 22. Simulation results with the IMU-DVL-RA navigation system when
initial localization error exists. (a) Estimated trajectory. (b) Estimation error.

at (0, 50) m in the navigation coordinate. The bias and measurement errors of the range sonar were set to 0.25 and 0.5 m, respectively. After generating the constant bias errors and random
noises for each sensor, measurement signals were obtained by
adding them to the simulated data.
DR navigation was performed to check the validity of the
generated data and to compare the performance with the IMUDVL-RA navigation system. Fig. 20 shows the DR navigation
results. The moving path of the AUV is the dotted line and
the estimated position is the solid line in horizontal plane plot.
Fig. 20(a) and (b) shows the tracking errors with the DR navigation. The navigation system appropriately estimates the AUV
position. The position estimation error is within 2.0 m for the
500-s maneuvering.

B. IMU-DVL-RPA With the AUV Dynamic Model

Navigational simulation was performed to demonstrate the
effectiveness of the IMU-DVL-RPA. The integrated navigation
system with range and phase aiding can be extended to the case
when only the relative velocity of the AUV is available. The
simulation conditions are all the same as those of the previous
section except the water-track relative velocity sensing and the
two range measurements. We assumed that the reference station is located at (50, 50, 0) m in the global frame, and the
and
are located at (0.5, 0, 0.3) and
range transducers
( 0.5, 0, 0.3) m in the body-fixed frame of the AUV, respecand
and the incident angle were gentively. The range
erated every 0.5 s considering the attitude and position of the
and .
AUV and the offset of the range transducers
Fig. 23 shows the tracking errors of the integrated navigation system with two range transducers. The IMU-DVL-RPA
finely estimates the position of the AUV in general, even with
the water-tracked relative velocity measurement. Since the ref-

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erence station is at (50, 50, 0), the incident angle is near

zero when the AUV turns for the adjacent parallel track. When
the incident angle is small, the measurement error increases
and the navigation system cannot compensate the position error
exactly. Thus, the position estimation shows erroneous results
when the AUV turns around. After turning the AUV and keeping
the normal range of the incident angle, the navigation system
can stably estimate the position. In Fig. 23, the estimation error
is larger than those of the IMU-DVL-RA shown in Fig. 22, however, it can track the path with the 5-m accuracy for the 10-min
maneuvering by using the relative velocity of the AUV.
When the DVL cannot catch the bottom reflection and only
the water-track relative velocity is available, the range-phase
information can keep the navigation system from drifting and
correct drift errors induced by the relative velocity information.
Therefore, we can extend the operational condition of the AUV
with the IMU-DVL-RPA.
VII. CONCLUSION
This paper presents an inertial acoustic underwater navigation system augmented with complementary range information.
Two measurement models of the range sensor were derived
and added to the conventional IMU-DVL navigation system
to improve the navigation performance. A multirate EKF was
adopted to propagate the error covariance with the inertial
sensors, where the filter updates the measurement errors and
the error covariance and corrects the system states when the

343

external measurements are available. The inertial acoustic

navigation system with RA stably estimates the position of underwater vehicles. Monte Carlo simulation with experimental
data and numerical model demonstrates the effectiveness of
the inertial acoustic navigation system with RA. This paper
simulates the influence of intermittent outliers, the short-duration dropouts of the range sensor and the DVL to the integrated
navigation system. This paper also examines the convergence
characteristics for the initial error removal. We can operate the
underwater vehicles by using the navigation system without a
special process for initialization. The strong point of the inertial
acoustic navigation system with range measurement is that it
is able to eliminate the error accumulation and remove initial
position errors and the dropout of acoustic signals.
APPENDIX
The system matrices
of the navigation system error model
(26) are as shown in the equation at the top of the page.
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Pan-Mook Lee (A95M99) received the B.S. degree from Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea, and the
M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon,
Korea, in 1983, 1985, and 1998, respectively, all in
mechanical engineering.
Since 1985, he has been a Principal Researcher
with the Maritime and Ocean Engineering Research
Institute, Korea Ocean Research and Development
Institute (KORDI), Daejeon, Korea. He was a
Visiting Researcher with the University of Hawaii,
Manoa, in 1998. His research interests include navigation, guidance, control of
underwater vehicles, and signal processing.
Dr. Lee is a member of the Korea Ocean Engineering Society (KSOE) and
the Institute of Control Automation System Engineers (ICASE) in Korea, and a
member of the Oceanic Engineering, Automatic Control, Industrial Electronics,
and Robotics and Automation Societies of IEEE.

Bong-Huan Jun received the B.S. and M.S. degrees

in mechanical engineering from the Pukyong National University, Busan, Korea, in 1994 and 1996,
respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in the Department
of Mechatronics Engineering, Chungnam National
University, Daejeon, Korea, in 2006.
He joined the Ocean System Development Laboratory of the Maritime and Ocean Engineering Research Institute, Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute (KORDI), in 1996 as a Research Scientist. His research interests include navigation guidance and control of underwater vehicles, analysis and motion planning of underwater manipulators.
Dr. Jun is a member of the Korea Ocean Engineering Society (KSOE) and
the Institute of Control Automation System Engineers (ICASE) in Korea.

Kihun Kim received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D.

degrees in naval architecture and ocean engineering
from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in
1998, 2000, and 2005, respectively.
Since 2005, he has been a Researcher in the
Maritime and Ocean Engineering Research Institute
of Ships and Ocean Engineering, Korea Ocean
Research and Development Institute (KORDI),
Daejeon, Korea. His research specializes in hydrodynamics, navigation and control, system identification,
and estimation of hydrodynamic coefficients for
autonomous underwater vehicles.
Dr. Kim is a member of the Society of Naval Architect of Korea.

Jihong Lee (M96) received the B.S. degree from the

Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 1983 and
the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Korea Advanced
Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea, in 1985 and 1991, respectively, all in
electrical and electronics engineering.
Since 2001, he has been a Professor in the
Mechatronics Engineering Department, Chungnam
National University, Daejeon, Korea. His research
interests include robotics, control system, and artificial intelligence with neural network and fuzzy logic
system.
Prof. Lee is a member of the Institute of Electronics Engineering of Korea
(IEEK) and the Institute of Control Automation System Engineers (ICASE) in
Korea, and a member of the Automatic Control and the Robotics and Automation Societies of IEEE.

LEE et al.: SIMULATION OF AN INERTIAL ACOUSTIC NAVIGATION SYSTEM WITH RA FOR AN AUV

Taro Aoki received the B.S. degree from the University of Electro-communications, Tokyo, Japan, in
1972.
Since 1978, he has been a Senior Researcher
with the Marine Technology Department of the
Japan Agency for Marine-Science and Technology
(JAMSTEC), Kanagawa, Japan, and he is currently
Program Director of the Marine Technology Research and Development Program of JAMSTEC. He
has a lot of experience in research and development
of underwater vehicles in JAMSTEC. He has taken
charge of the development of Dolphin 3K, UROV7K, 11 000-m-depth-rated
ROV KAIKO, a working AUV MR-X1, and a 3000-m-depth-rated AUV
URASHIMA.

345

Tadahiro Hyakudome received the B.S. degree

from the Department of Computer Science and Systems Engineering, Kyushu Institute of Technology,
Kyushu, Japan, in 1995 and the M.S. and Ph.D.
degrees from the Interdisciplinary Graduate School
of Engineering Sciences, Kyushu University, in 1997
and 2000, respectively.
Since 2004, he has been a Researcher with the Marine Technology Research and Development Program
of the Japan Agency for Marine-Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Kanagawa, Japan. His research
interests are the research and development of the navigation, control, and power
systems of a 300-km-long-range AUV, URASHIMA.