Terrain aided navigation for long-range AUVs using a new bathymetric contour matching method

Terrain aided navigation (TAN) is an effective technique to obtain a position estimate for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) when GPS signals are unavailable. To overcome the limitations on initial position errors and AUV trajectory, this paper presents a new bathymetric contour matching method on high-resolution maps. With the help of the single beam echo sounder or the multi-beam echo sounder, the proposed method is verified by seabed TAN. Extensive experiments with high-accuracy bathymetric data on both synthetic and real bathymetric maps show that the AUV position errors are almost proportional to the circular error probability (CEP) of the position. The research has practical significance in position initial alignment for long-range AUVs.