MAINS, A NEW MARINE NAVIGATOR

P. Siskind and E. Von Arx

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	Analysis of the Navy navigation requirements for its various hull types and missions has shown that a new approach to meeting these requirements is needed. Consideration of the requirements for the more sophisticated commercial vessels leads to a similar conclusion. The current spectrum of navigation equipments in the Navy ranges from simple gyrocompasses used with dead reckoning techniques to the highly accurate and complex SINS equipments. The analysis indicates that the large majority of future navigation requirements will required performance superior to that of the simpler equipments currently available, but not as good as that of the SINS. A number of radio navigation aids such as LORAN, OMEGA, and satellites are being deployed on a wordwide basis. These aids will permit frequent sources. In addition to the deploymetn of these aids, an increasing number of ships are being equipped with large capacity central digital computers which can be used to process navigation data from various sources. By combining the data from the radio aids with inertial data, using the central digital computers where available, navigation information of sufficient accuracy to satisfy the requirements of most mission can be obtained. The concept of using position fixes to aid and improve the performance of an inertial system has been demonstrated in the SINS Programs by successfully mixing, in an optimal manner, data received from LORAN and satellite aids with inertial data. The Marine Aided Inertial Navigation System (MAINS) utilizes the frequent position fixes available from the aids to reduce the performance requirements and therefore the cost of the inertial unit.
Published in:	NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Volume 18, Number 4
Pages:	433 - 439
Cite this article:	Siskind, P., Von Arx, E., "MAINS, A NEW MARINE NAVIGATOR", NAVIGATION: Journal of The Institute of Navigation, Vol. 18, No. 4, Winter 1971-1972, pp. 433-439.
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