Thales Navigation's new integrated marine solution offering LRK positioning and accurate heading determination: technique, field results and applications

Pascal Lutz, René Gounon, Jean-Claude Pascal, and Olivier Casabianca

Abstract:	Thales Navigation developed an innovative marine product family featuring simultaneous RTK positioning and accurate attitude determination. The goals of this contribution are to outline the principles of the RTK algorithm and its use for accurate attitude determination, to present a complete set of field results that confirm the efficiency of the approach, and to describe the applications made possible by these techniques. The RTK positioning is performed by an original algorithm known as LRKÆÊ (Long Range Kinematic). This algorithmic approach has no equivalent and its main advantage is a large coverage operationally beneficial to marine applications where stations are installed on-shore. A specialization of the KART/LRKÆÊ algorithm uses a known inter-antenna geometric constraint thereby improving the performance of the initialization process. After an automated calibration, this algorithm accurately estimates the vessel’s heading to the true geographic north, as well as roll or pitch information depending on the antennas set-up on the vessel. RTK algorithms are usually very demanding in terms of processor time. The low computation load of the KART/LRKÆÊ permits one single processor to compute the RTK position of the vessel as well as its accurate attitude. Subsequently, the paper discusses the intrinsic performance of LRKÆÊ as well as that of the heading determination for different inter-antenna distances. Preliminary validation campaigns were conducted at sea and were followed by extensive tests with the LCPC, the French state research laboratory for road and bridge construction. Eventually, the paper describes how these techniques match the demanding needs of the fishing, marine navigation, marine surveying or dredging industries. Applications are presented in detail.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 15th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2002) September 24 - 27, 2002 Oregon Convention Center Portland, OR
Pages:	2703 - 2712
Cite this article:	Lutz, Pascal, Gounon, René, Pascal, Jean-Claude, Casabianca, Olivier, "Thales Navigation's new integrated marine solution offering LRK positioning and accurate heading determination: technique, field results and applications," Proceedings of the 15th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2002), Portland, OR, September 2002, pp. 2703-2712.
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