Depth sensor and DVL-aided vertical channel damping loop design for underwater vehicles

A novel vertical channel damping loop design method that uses not only a depth sensor but also a Doppler velocity log (DVL) for underwater vehicles is proposed. In the proposed method, the loop gains are calculated by adopting the steady-state Kalman filter gain with consideration of characteristics of the depth sensor and the DVL. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves better performance than the conventional method.