Aided Inertial Navigation System Solutions: Application for Synthetic Aperture Sonar

Future naval systems for MCM will include a family of advanced underwater vehicles: AUV’s, towed vehicles, inspection ROV’s, expendable mine disposal vehicles etc. Navigation system technical requirements range from low cost for disposable vehicles in high quantity production to state-of-the-art autonomous navigation in support of AUV’s and high resolution Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) for mine hunting. Using modern development tools and floating point embedded processors it was possible to create a generic implementation of the conventional Aided Inertial Navigation System (AINS) framework. The proven framework and real-time embedded software/hardware ensures optimum fit of navigation systems technical requirements via complete freedom in choice of navigation sensors, aiding techniques and operational procedures. This paper describes the underlying navigation system framework and in particular the first real-time embedded application within an underwater vehicle: Extremely high performance relative navigation in support of SAS processing for detection of buried mines.