Cooperative localization with communication delays for MAUVs

In this paper, we consider the problem of cooperative localization (CL) with communication delays for multiple autonomous underwater vehicles(MAUVs). Localization is a crucial cycle for long range navigation of MAUVs. In the leader-follower cooperative structure, one master AUV is equipped with high precision navigation system, and several slaver AUVs are equipped with low precision navigation system. To sharing information, inter-vehicle communication is becoming an important requirement for cooperative localization. However, due to the terrible underwater environment, acoustic communication is still a difficult challenge for AUVs until now. Taking into account the communication delays, a delayed extended Kalman filter (DEKF) for cooperative localization is designed, where the delayed messages were converted to current after some useful transformations. At the end of this paper, simulation results are provided to prove the superiority and practicality of the proposed DEKF algorithm.