INTEGRATION OF GPS WITH INERTIAL NAVIGATION SYSTEMS (MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS)

D. B. Cox

Peer Reviewed

Abstract: The state of the art in inertial navigation has been under development for over two decades, is widely utilized in military and civilian applications, and is well documented in the technical literature. On the other hand, the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System (GPS) has been under development for a much shorter period and has not yet been utilized to a significant extent in practical applications. With the publication of this special issue of Navigation, a forthcoming special AGARDOGRAPH and with reference to a host of government reports, conference papers, and journal articles, the state of current GPS technology will be quite well documented. Because of the many desirable features of GPS, it is very likely to be utilized world-wide in a very large number of practical applications. In some applications, e.g., for tactical aircraft, the combination of an inertial navigation system (INS) and the GPS offers particular advantages, and integrated GPS-INS systems are being developed to capitalize on these advantages. Early integrated systems will be achieved by integrating GPS navigators with existing INSs. These integrated systems will exploit the synergism between the GPS and inertial subsystems, but because these INSs have not been designed for integration with GPS hardware, exploitation may be only partial. Integration of GPS and INS subsystems with other subsystems such as JTIDS3, will also occur in the future. Although more and more complex functions will be able to be optimized via future digital computing power, it is likely that the major hardware and software subsystems on tactical aircraft will remain substantially autonomous. Maintaining subsystem autonomy will take advantage of the enhanced reliability and maintainability associated with such architectures and the steady reductions in costs of local processors and multiplexors.
Published in: NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Volume 25, Number 2
Pages: 236 - 245
Cite this article: Cox, D. B., "INTEGRATION OF GPS WITH INERTIAL NAVIGATION SYSTEMS (MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS)", NAVIGATION: Journal of The Institute of Navigation, Vol. 25, No. 2, Summer 1978, pp. 236-245.
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