Analysis of Measure Uncertainty in Radial Velocity for Underwater Acoustic Navigation

Estimation process in radial velocity for underwater acoustic navigation is affected by time-varying channel. The channel has uncertainty with complex randomness and multi parameter coupling. Understanding accurately and quantifying effectively the measure uncertainty can provide matching quality evaluation auxiliary information for acoustic velocity measurement and input accurate measurement noise in real-time for multiple information fusion processes. It is an important way to improve navigation accuracy. This article decomposes the environmental factors that affect the estimation process of radial velocity into two parts: the spatial distribution of reverberation intensity and radial velocity, for analyzing the uncertainty in radial velocity under typical environmental parameters. Preliminary difference analysis of measure uncertainty under different environments is completed through the distribution statistics of velocity estimation output by acoustic Doppler velocity log in experiments. Then, a simulation model is used to analyze the characteristics of radial velocity distribution under several typical environmental parameters further. It can be concluded that the radial velocity distribution with significant environmental and system parameter dependence has certain non-Gaussian characteristic.