PHINS: Photonic Integrated Navigation System

摘要

The technological achievements over the last years and the needs of oil industry and of the marine scientific community have lead to the design of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) operating several thousand meters under the sea. Until recently no suitable navigation system was available for such vehicles. In this paper we present Phins: the first integrated navigation system designed to solve the underwater positioning problem (now Phins is. also declined for marine, land and air applications). Phins, designed by Ixsea-Oceano, is the result of merging the technical competences of lxsca, formerly known as Photonelics. in inertial sensors and of Oceano Technology in acoustic positioning systems (APS). Phins is based on state of the art fiber optic gyroscopes made by Ixsea-Oceano. It can be used either as an autonomous inertial navigation system or it can integrate data coming from GPS. APS, Doppier velocity log (DVL) and depth sensors. In this paper we will present the subsea positioning issue and we will explain how Phins can solve this problem using a specially designed Kalman filter. Evenlually we will present some tests results.