New low cost avionics with INS/GPS for a variety of vehicles

Development of a new vehicle avionics suite is described, including integration of a low-cost, tightly-coupled integrated Inertial Navigation System/Global Positioning System (INS/GPS) to support vehicle guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C). A wide variety of next-generation low-cost launch vehicles could potentially benefit from integrated INS/GPS technology for GN&C and/or range safety applications. Coleman Aerospace Company (CAC) has developed a new low-cost avionics suite, the generic Integrated Mission Guidance & Tracking System (IMGTS), an open architecture, modular system that supports the requirements for various guidance applications and range safety tracking. As part of this development, Boeing North American, Inc. is supplying its Modular Miniature Integrated GPS/INS Tactical System (M-MIGITS^TM) Military-Off-The-Shelf (MOTS) INS/GPS product to support CAC's IMGTS GN&C     

DQI-NP application to the OutriderTM Tactical UnmannedAerial Vehicle (TUAV)

A wide variety of applications can benefit from integrated Inertial Navigation System/Global Positioning System (INS/GPS) technology. However, in many situations, the end user has a preference for a specific GPS receiver. Additionally, in most cases, the user does not desire to expend the time and money necessary to perform a custom INS/GPS integration, but instead wants a low-cost off-the-shelf solution. To address these applications, Boeing has developed the Digital Quartz Inertial Measurement Unit (DQI IMU)-Navigation Processor (DQI-NP) product as an extension of its Miniature Integrated GPS/INS Tactical System (MIGITS^TM) family of integrated INS/GPS products. This paper describes the DQI-NP and its application to the Outrider^TM Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (TUAV). The DQI-NP, as currently integrated into the Outrider^TM TUAV, is coupled with a custom Trimble GPS receiver combined with major embedded firmware modifications by IntegriNautics. In conjunction with differential GPS and ground based pseudolites, the overall system is intended to provide autonomous landing capability to the Outrider TUAV. DQI-NP provides an available, low-cost, commercial-off-the-shelf/non-development item (COTS/NDI) solution to a variety of commercial and military applications, of which the Outrider ^TM TUAV is an excellent example     

GPS/惯性组合方式讨论与导航精度分析

 本文讨论GPS/惯性组合两种方式的优缺点。并以GPS伪距和伪距率与惯导组合为例,按GPS测量误差的不同,以及使用差分机等情况,仿真计算了机载使用的组合导航性能,进行了详细的精度分析。结果表明,这种组合的导航精度比GPS和惯导各自的导航精度高。在采用差分GPS机与惯导组合后,位置误差将进一步减少,使组合导航具有开辟例如飞机进场着陆等新的使用领域的可能性。     

Sole means navigation in US Navy aircraft

The current edition of the US Federal Radionavigation Plan, issued in 1984, presents a consolidated federal plane on the management of those radionavigation systems which are used by both the civilian and military sectors. It states the US Dept. of Defense (DoD) goal to phase out the use of TACAN, VOR/DME, OMEGA, LORAN C, and TRANSIT in military platforms and for Global Positioning System (GPS) to become the standard radionavigation system for DoD. This would eliminate all the current sole-means air navigation systems (TACAN and VOR/DME) aboard military aircraft. Instrument Flight Rule (IFR) operations within controlled airspace requires an operating sole-means air navigation system to be aboard the aircraft. The authors investigate the requirements for GPS certification as a sole means air navigation system in the US National Airspace System (NAS); discuss the implication for GPS user equipment (UE) hardware and software; describe the actual UE implementation; and discuss approaches for UE integration with flight instruments on US Navy aircraft     

Supplements to Active Filters in the VOR

This paper covers some important advances in understanding the problems associated with the VOR system, especially in connection with area navigation. Anomalies arising from airborne equipment, operating in the airborne environment, are described and analyzed. Factors contributing to overall system accuracy are treated with respect to VOR receiver response and to rate-limiting, filter means, with special attention to appropriate noise reduction systems providing zero or minimal time delay characteristics. The use of active filters in the VOR receiver is shown to be of major importance with regard to signal improvement and overall system accuracy. Active filters of the constant slew rate type have proved of significant value, both within the VOR receiver as well as in signal processing.     

北斗/GPS双频载波相位单点定位模型及精度分析

针对海洋工程实时米级绝对定位需求,利用双频伪距、载波相位观测量和同时估计接收机位置、接收机钟差和载波相位模糊度,构建了一种双频载波相位实时单点定位方法.亚太区域14个测站试验结果显示:北斗水平和高程定位RMS分别为1.33m和1.81m,GPS为0.60m和0.85m,北斗/GPS组合为0.56m和0.72m;船载动态试验结果显示:北斗水平和高程定位RMS分别为1.40m 和2.46m,GPS为0.69m 和0.90m,北斗/GPS组合为0.65m和0.83m.     

GPS Aided Inertial Navigation

The Global Positioning System is an extremely accurate satellite-based navigation system which, after its completion in 1989, will provide users worldwide, 24 hour. all weather coverage. A joint research project among Boeing, Rockwell-Collins, and Northrop has been completed in which a GPS receiver was integrated with a low-cost strap-down inertial navigation system and a flight computer. A Kalman filter in the latter allows in-fight alignment and calibration of the INS. In addition, feedback from the INS to the GPS receiver improves the system's ability to reacquire satellite signals after outages. The resulting system combines the accuracy of GPS with the jamming immunity and autonomy of inertial navigation. System tests were conducted in which a Boeing owned T-33 jet aircraft was flown through known test pattern to align and calibrate the INS. Earlier tests, including tests against an airborne jammer, were conducted in a modified passenger bus.     

气压高度表辅助下GPS接收机自备完善性监测可用性研究

 对我国范围内飞机非精密进场及终端航行时全球定位导航系统（ＧＰＳ）接收机自备完善性监测（ＲＡＩＭ）的可用性进行了研究，分析了气压高度表辅助和故障偏置大小对ＧＰＳＲＡＩＭ可用性的影响。结果表明：气压高度表与ＧＰＳ组合是提高ＲＡＩＭ可用性的有效措施；过大或过小的偏置误差将产生较小的漏警概率，而中等大小的故障偏置则产生较大的漏警概率     

Wide-Aperture Digital VOR

The very high frequency (VHF) omnirange has undergone a number of evolutionary changes in the past 30 years. Early measurements of large errors led to the development of the Doppler VHF omnidirectional irectioal range (VOR) and its use. Further developments have been the precision multilobe VOR and the precision Doppler VOR. Interest in area navigation has led to the desire for a VOR greatly superior to any so far developed. Specifically, the objectives of the improved VOR would be a system that would significantly reduce magnitude of siting errors, provide greater accuracy and use digital techniques to simplify processing. ssing. The wide-aperture digital VOR described herein has been developed to meet these objectives. Its design is based on the crossed-pair interferometer principle where eight such pairs are energized successively by a set of pulses and phase shifts. The time multiplexed signal, detected by the aircraft receiver, is processed and simple digital computations are performedto determine the angular coordinates. The performance improvements have been achieved by the combination of using a 275-ft antenna aperture, and the use of digital techniques to generate the ground-radiated navigational signals and to process them in the airborne processor. Field tests of the feasibility model indicate it is a high performance ance system, capable of achieving an order of magnitude improvement in both site error reduction and in accuracy compared to present VOR systems. The measured accuracies were 0.11-degree standard deviation.     

GPS/INS integration on the Standoff Land Attack Missile (SLAM)

The Standoff Land Attack Missile (SLAM) is a worldwide, all-weather, precision-strike weapon system deployed from carrier-based aircraft. In the primary mode of operation, target location and other mission data are generated from intelligence sources available on the aircraft carrier and loaded into the missile prior to aircraft takeoff. After missile launch, the SLAM inertial navigation system (INS) guides the missile along the planned trajectory. Updating the missile INS from the Global Positioning System (GPS) during flight provides precise midcourse navigation and enhances target acquisition by accurate, on-target pointing of the SLAM Maverick seeker. The GPS/INS avionics and software integration used for SLAM are described in detail, along with some of the design tradeoffs that led to the approach. The avionics configuration integrates the Harpoon midcourse guidance unit, which includes a strapdown inertial sensor package and digital processor, with a Rockwell-Collins single-channel, sequential GPS receiver processor unit (RPU), a derivative of the GPS phase-III user equipment. In addition to the GPS receiver elements the RPU contains the navigation processor, which executes the SLAM navigation, Kalman filter algorithms, and other guidance algorithms including seeker pointing. Flight-test results of the SLAM GPS-aided INS are also included     

Sequential Piecewise Recursive Filter for GPS Low-Dynamics Navigation

The design, implementation, and performance of a real-time estimation algorithm, referred to in this paper as the sequential piecewise recursive (SPWR) algorithm, for the global-positioning system (GPS) low-dynamics navigation system is described. The SPWR algorithm for this application was implemented in single precision arithmetic (32 bit, floating point). Numerical results are presented covariance and filter gains at a slower rate than the state measurement update, and it uses U-D factor formulation to perform covariance computations. The SPWR algorithm saves real-time processing requirements without appreciable degradation of filter performance. Another important feature of the SPWR algorithm is that it incorporates pseudorange and delta-range data from each GPS satellite sequentially for navigation solution. The SPWR algorithm, for this application, was implemented in single precision arithmetic (32 bit, floating point). Numerical results are presented.     

带FDI算法的无人机组合导航姿态确定控制系统设计

无人机导航系统的作用是提供导航数据给飞控计算机作为制导和控制用,因为飞控计算机的性能在很大程度上依赖于导航数据,导航系统的某一个错误可能会导致整个无人机的失败,因此,导航系统应具有故障检测和隔离(FDI)算法,介绍了一种用于无人机导航的FDI和低成本的组合导航系统,硬件包括低成本商业用MEMSIMU、GPS接收器、磁力计和导航计算机,软件包括带FDI算法的卡尔曼滤波。     

伪距解除相关法在GPS/SINS紧组合系统中的应用研究

介绍了伪距解除相关法的原理 ,设计了一种加权平均跟踪误差估计器 ,用以估计 GPS接收机码环跟踪误差。研究结果表明 ,与未对伪距测量值进行修正时相比 ,应用伪距解除相关技术可以减小组合系统的导航误差 ,提高系统的导航精度     

Potential interference sources to GPS and solutions appropriate forapplications to civil aviation

When the GPS (Global Positioning System) is subjected to interference, the system performance gradually deteriorates as the interfering levels increase. Two modes of interference are discussed in detail, namely, that from transmissions at frequencies close to the GPS frequencies and that from transmissions with a harmonic in the GPS band. It is argued that the former requires RF filtering in the receiver with a quality better than that generally specified. The latter cannot be dealt with in such a way. Measurements carried out on the harmonic levels transmitted by one UK TV transmitter and several hundred aircraft VHF transmitters are reported. The measurements show there is a measurable level of harmonics in the GPS band. The UK TV transmitter does not, however, represent a threat to aviation unless the aircraft is so close as to represent a physical danger. The probability that one aircraft's VHF transmitter will interfere with the GPS receiver on another aircraft is tolerably small, but there is a significant probability that a GPS receiver can suffer when there is a VHF transmission from the same aircraft. Several recommendations are made, including an international effort to ensure that spurious emissions are both quantified and kept at a level significantly lower than that achieved today     

Design and Development of a Real-Time DSP and FPGA-Based Integrated GPS-INS System for Compact and Low Power Applications

Emphasis of the present work is on an elegant real-time solution for GPS/INS integration. Micro-electro mechanical system (MEMS) based inertial sensors are light but not accurate enough for inertial navigation system (INS) applications. An integrated INS/GPS system provides better accuracy compared with either INS or GPS, used individually. This paper describes an improved design and fabrication of a loosely coupled INS-GPS integrated system. The systems currently available use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and are, therefore, not optimized for compact, single supply, and low power requirements. In the proposed system, a digital signal processor (DSP) is used for inertial navigation solution and Kalman filter computations. A field programmable gate array (FPGA) is used for creating an efficient interface of the GPS with the DSP. Direct serial interface of the GPS involve tedious processing overhead on the navigation processor. Therefore, a universal asynchronous receiver transmitter (UART) and dual port random axis memory (DPRAM) are created on the FPGA itself. This also reduces the total chip count, resulting in a compact system. The system is designed to give real time processed navigation solutions with an update rate of 100 Hz. All the details of this work are presented.     

Multipath-adaptive GPS/INS receiver

Multipath interference is one of the contributing sources of errors in precise global positioning system (GPS) position determination. This paper identifies key parameters of a multipath signal, focusing on estimating them accurately in order to mitigate multipath effects. Multiple model adaptive estimation (MMAE) techniques are applied to an inertial navigation system (INS)-coupled GPS receiver, based on a federated (distributed) Kalman filter design, to estimate the desired multipath parameters. The system configuration is one in which a GPS receiver and an INS are integrated together at the level of the in-phase and quadrature phase (I and Q) signals, rather than at the level of pseudo-range signals or navigation solutions. The system model of the MMAE is presented and the elemental Kalman filter design is examined. Different parameter search spaces are examined for accurate multipath parameter identification. The resulting GPS/INS receiver designs are validated through computer simulation of a user receiving signals from GPS satellites with multipath signal interference present The designed adaptive receiver provides pseudo-range estimates that are corrected for the effects of multipath interference, resulting in an integrated system that performs well with or without multipath interference present.     

Hard Limiting and Sequential Detection Applied to Loran-C

The combination of an antenna, a 100 kHz bandpass filter, a hard limiter, and a sequential detector can supply highly accurate Loran-C data to a digital processor, even under low signal-to-noise-ratio conditions. For such a simple, low-cost receiver, calculations are given for the accuracy of the envelope and phase tracking of the Loran-C signal as a function of the signal-to-noise (Gaussian and atmospheric) ratio, averaging time, and radian speed of the observer with respect to the transmitter. Mentioned are the quasi-noise censoring effects of the hard limiter. Besides the Loran-C application, the hard limiter-sequential detector system can in general be applied for low-cost, synchronous signal detection under poor signal-to-noise ratio.     

基于解重扩算法的GPS抗干扰实时接收机研究

提出了一种基于解重扩算法的GPS抗干扰实时接收机系统的硬件实现方案。此方案充分利用解重扩算法和GPS接收机的特点,将两者紧密耦合,并根据FPGA和DSP的不同性能,实现了资源的合理配置。实测数据验证表明,该系统不仅能够抑制干扰信号,而且可对卫星信号产生较大增益,实现多波束抗干扰。     

GPS guidance system increases projectile accuracy

To meet the size/performance and cost-driven goals required for more advanced projectile and mortar applications, IEC focused its efforts on function consolidation, electronic signal protection, ultra-deep sensor integration, and processing stability. IEC's development has been in the utilization of silicon-based micro-machine technology for the inertial sensor, high levels of processor integration, and hardware function consolidation, making the guidance package inherently immune to the vibration and high G shock effects of the launch. In addition, the size and power are sufficiently reduced to fit the constraints of the fuse well. While a GPS “only”-based guidance system seemed an ideal solution for the lowest cost implementation of smart weapon guidance, the potential for signal jamming meant that a GPS “only” solution would not be able to guide the projectile to the target. To resolve this limitation, an anti-jam (AJ) capability had to be incorporated into the GPS receiver, and a miniature on-board inertial measurement unit (IMU) had to be part of the system. Initial laboratory tests have proven that the GPS/inertial guidance system, enhanced with a robust, low-cost AJ subsystem, performs consistently well under simulated battlefield conditions