Flexible GPS SofWare Approach for Post-Mission Position and Attitude Determination for Airborne Applications

Darren Cosandier, Hugh Martell, Dave Belton, John Mertz, Stewart Platz

Abstract:	Many airborne applications require accurate absolute GPS positioning, while large elevation and distance separations between the base and remote stations make accurate ionospheric and tropospheric modeling important. Some specialized airborne applications require high relative accuracies between two moving platforms. This requires specialized moving baseline processing. Finally, some of these applications require platform attitude, which can be computed from multi-antenna GPS. This paper discusses an all-in-one GPS post-processing package, called GratNav, which handles all of these processing situations. GrafNav, which is developed by Waypoint Consulting Inc., is based about a combined code and carrier Kahnan Filter. This is known as the Carrier Phase Kinematic (CPK) technique, and it is implemented both in post-processing and real-time. CPK and the Kinematic Ambiguity Resolution (KAR) combine to produce a flexible and accurate GPS processing methodology. Absolute airborne positioning results show accuracies of <8 cm RMS tie ob~inable over a +40 km ~ea+ Photogrammetric methods are used for comparison, which forms an independent check. Relative positioning accuracies between two moving aircraft show internal agreement of <10 cm, agreement between real-time and post-mission solutions of <30 cm, and agreement between moving base and fixed base solutions of <50 cm. The fixed base station was -500 km away. Lastly, GPS attitude determination accuracies of 0.1 to 0.2 degrees are obtainable over a 5-8 metre antema separation.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 10th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1997) September 16 - 19, 1997 Kansas City, MO
Pages:	1781 - 1788
Cite this article:	Cosandier, Darren, Martell, Hugh, Belton, Dave, Mertz, John, Platz, Stewart, "Flexible GPS SofWare Approach for Post-Mission Position and Attitude Determination for Airborne Applications," Proceedings of the 10th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1997), Kansas City, MO, September 1997, pp. 1781-1788.
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