Robust adaptive non‐linear alignment algorithm for SINS/DVL integrated navigation system based on variational Bayesian

Abstract The problem of dynamic attitude alignment for strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) and Doppler velocity log (DVL) integrated navigation has become a research hotspot. Underwater complex environment makes DVL output vulnerable to non‐Gaussian noise pollution, which makes it difficult to converge the SINS misalignment angle to within 1° based on analytical coarse alignment. This is to say, the performance of SINS fine alignment via Kalman filter will be degraded because the model of initial alignment exhibits non‐linearity. The inaccurate and/or unknown prior information of measurement noise statistical characteristics will also degrade the filtering performance. To ensure the SINS/DVL alignment accuracy under non‐linear, non‐Gaussian and uncertain conditions, this paper proposed a robust adaptive unscented Kalman filter (UKF) based on Variational Bayesian (VB) method (VBRAUKF). The proposed VBRAUKF improves the adaptability and robustness of UKF from the following two main aspects. Firstly, an adaptive estimation strategy for the measurement noise covariance is designed based on the VB algorithm, which can restrain the effect of inaccurate observation model and improve the adaptive ability of the filtering method. Secondly, an expansion factor is designed based on Mahalanobis distance algorithm, which can restrain the effect of non‐Gaussian noise and improve the robustness of the filtering method. The experimental results for the problem of the SINS/DVL dynamic alignment under mixed Gaussian noise and/or outlier conditions demonstrate the superiority of the proposed VBRAUKF over the traditional ones.