Improvement of the Accuracy of Supershort Baseline Acoustic Positioning System by Kalman Filter

Underwater acoustic navigation and position fixing systems have been extensively used not only in surface position fixing but also in underwater position fixing. Tn recently, application of these systems has been in the field of underwater inspection of offshore platforms, where it is vital to track the position of an unmanned submersible or diver carrying underwater cameras and nondestructive testing equipment. But these systems are included the fixing errors as results of a signal with additive noise, the attenuation of sound and the interference effects due to multipath reflection and forward scattering. In this paper to improve the position fixing by the supershort baseline acoustic position system, a method to apply the Kalman filter to the fix of the system is proposed and the digital simulation under noise condition is conducted. The optimal positions by the Kalman filter are compared with original positions, and it is confirmed that the results of the pro-posed method are evidently more accurate.