Ultra Short Baseline (USBL) navigation systems are often faced with positioning errors arising from misalignments between sensors. This paper proposes a line survey method for USBL angular alignment calibration. In the scheme of USBL line survey, mathematical representations of positioning error arising from heading, pitch and roll misalignments are derived, respectively. The effect of each misalignment angle and how the differences can be used to calibrate each misalignment angle in turn are presented. An iterative algorithm that takes advantage of the geometry of position errors resulting from angular misalignments is developed for USBL calibration. Numerical simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the USBL line survey approach. In addition, the effect of measurement error on the estimation of roll alignment error is evaluated and discussed.

An algorithm of alignment calibration for Ultra Short Baseline (USBL) navigation systems was presented in the companion work (Part I). In this part (Part II) of the paper, this algorithm is tested on the sea trial data collected from USBL line surveys. In particular, the solutions to two practical problems referred to as heading deviation and cross-track error in the USBL line survey are presented. A field experiment running eight line surveys was conducted to collect USBL positioning data. The numerical results for the sea trial data demonstrated that the proposed algorithm could robustly and effectively estimate the alignment errors. Comparisons of the experimental result with the analytical prediction of roll misalignment estimation in Part I is drawn, showing good agreement. The experimental results also show that an inappropriate estimation of roll alignment error will significantly degrade the quality of estimations of heading and pitch alignment errors.