Acta Geodaetica et Cartographica Sinica ›› 2026, Vol. 55 ›› Issue (4): 698-707.doi: 10.11947/j.AGCS.2026.20260028

• Geodesy and Navigation • Previous Articles    

Buoys-aided integrated navigation method for UUV under ice with sea ice drift compensation

Siyuan BAI(), Hongzhou CHAI(), Qing WU, Gen LI, Yuhao YE, Honglei MA   

  1. Geography Space Information Institute, Information Engineering University, Zhengzhou 450001, China
  • Received:2026-02-05 Revised:2026-04-09 Published:2026-05-11
  • Contact: Hongzhou CHAI E-mail:baisiyuan_kyle@foxmail.com;chaihz1969@163.com
  • About author:BAI Siyuan (2000—), male, PhD candidate, majors in UUV polar region integrated navigation. E-mail: baisiyuan_kyle@foxmail.com
  • Supported by:
    The National Natural Science Foundation of China(42404010; 42574011)

Abstract:

To address the problem that the measurement values of the upward-looking Doppler velocity log (DVL) are significantly affected by sea ice drift when unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) navigate under ice, a buoy-aided integrated navigation method for UUV under ice is proposed. Firstly, a sea ice drift motion model is established to clarify the coupling mechanism of sea ice drift on UUV velocity measurements. Secondly, the measurement error equations of each sensor considering sea ice drift are derived in detail, and the Kalman filter models for the UUV inertial navigation/upward-looking DVL integrated navigation assisted by single-buoysanddouble-buoysareconstructedrespectively. Finally, simulation experiments are designed. The results show that, in the single-buoy-aided mode, the proposed algorithm effectively suppresses the systematic errors induced by sea ice drift, achieving a positioning error reduction of 81.96% over the traditional SINS/upward-looking DVL integrated navigation method ignoring sea ice drift errors. In the dual-buoy-aided mode, by leveraging baseline motion information, the algorithm enables accurate estimation of sea ice drift errors, further reducing positioning error by 93.29% compared to traditional method. This provides an effective solution for long-endurance, high-precision UUV navigation under ice.

Key words: sea ice drift, unmanned underwater vehicle, under-ice navigation and positioning, ice-based buoy, upward-looking DVL, Kalman filter

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