An Asynchronous Two-Speed Kalman Filter for Real-Time UUV Cooperative Navigation Under Acoustic Delays

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Li, Shuyue, López-Benítez, Miguel, Lim, Eng Gee, Ma, Fei, Dong, Qian, Cao, Mengze, Yu, Limin, Qin, Xiaohui
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Li, Shuyue
López-Benítez, Miguel
Lim, Eng Gee
Ma, Fei
Dong, Qian
Cao, Mengze
Yu, Limin
Qin, Xiaohui
author_facet Li, Shuyue
López-Benítez, Miguel
Lim, Eng Gee
Ma, Fei
Dong, Qian
Cao, Mengze
Yu, Limin
Qin, Xiaohui
contents In Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-denied underwater environments, individual unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) suffer from unbounded dead-reckoning drift, making collaborative navigation (CN) crucial for accurate state estimation. However, the severe communication delay inherent in underwater acoustic channels poses serious challenges to real-time state estimation. Traditional filters, such as Extended Kalman Filters (EKFs) or Unscented Kalman Filters (UKFs), usually block the main control loop while waiting for delayed data, or effectively discard Out-of-Sequence Measurements (OOSMs), resulting in serious drift. To address this, we propose an Asynchronous Two-Speed Kalman Filter (TSKF) enhanced by a novel projection mechanism, which we term Variational History Distillation (VHD). The proposed architecture decouples the estimation process into two parallel threads: a fast-rate thread that utilizes Gaussian Process (GP) compensated dead reckoning to guarantee high-frequency real-time control, and a slow-rate thread dedicated to processing asynchronously delayed collaborative information. By introducing a Finite-Length Circular State Buffer (FLCSB), the algorithm applies delayed measurements to their corresponding historical states, and utilizes a VHD-based projection to fast-forward the correction to the current time without computationally heavy recalculations. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed TSKF maintains a trajectory error comparable to computationally intensive batch-optimization methods under severe delays (up to 30\,s). Executing in sub-millisecond time, it significantly outperforms standard EKF/UKF. The results demonstrate an effective control, communication, and computing (3C) co-design that significantly enhances the resilience of autonomous marine automation systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_02878
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle An Asynchronous Two-Speed Kalman Filter for Real-Time UUV Cooperative Navigation Under Acoustic Delays
Li, Shuyue
López-Benítez, Miguel
Lim, Eng Gee
Ma, Fei
Dong, Qian
Cao, Mengze
Yu, Limin
Qin, Xiaohui
Robotics
Systems and Control
In Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-denied underwater environments, individual unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) suffer from unbounded dead-reckoning drift, making collaborative navigation (CN) crucial for accurate state estimation. However, the severe communication delay inherent in underwater acoustic channels poses serious challenges to real-time state estimation. Traditional filters, such as Extended Kalman Filters (EKFs) or Unscented Kalman Filters (UKFs), usually block the main control loop while waiting for delayed data, or effectively discard Out-of-Sequence Measurements (OOSMs), resulting in serious drift. To address this, we propose an Asynchronous Two-Speed Kalman Filter (TSKF) enhanced by a novel projection mechanism, which we term Variational History Distillation (VHD). The proposed architecture decouples the estimation process into two parallel threads: a fast-rate thread that utilizes Gaussian Process (GP) compensated dead reckoning to guarantee high-frequency real-time control, and a slow-rate thread dedicated to processing asynchronously delayed collaborative information. By introducing a Finite-Length Circular State Buffer (FLCSB), the algorithm applies delayed measurements to their corresponding historical states, and utilizes a VHD-based projection to fast-forward the correction to the current time without computationally heavy recalculations. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed TSKF maintains a trajectory error comparable to computationally intensive batch-optimization methods under severe delays (up to 30\,s). Executing in sub-millisecond time, it significantly outperforms standard EKF/UKF. The results demonstrate an effective control, communication, and computing (3C) co-design that significantly enhances the resilience of autonomous marine automation systems.
title An Asynchronous Two-Speed Kalman Filter for Real-Time UUV Cooperative Navigation Under Acoustic Delays
topic Robotics
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.02878