Carrier-phase Bias Initialization for Formation Flying Vehicles with Onboard Pseudolites 1

Eric A. Olsen, Chan-Woo Park, Jonathan P. How

Abstract:	This paper describes research on the initialization of the carrier-phase biases for a formation of vehicles. Although absolute position at the centimeter level is generally not possible in real-time, relative position between vehicles within the formation can be obtained at these levels using carrier-phase differential GPS (CD GPS). However, several challenges exist before these measurements can be used to accurately estimate the formation state, including solving for the carrier-phase biases. One method to accurately solve for the biases is to wait for the NAVSTAR constellation to move about in their orbits. However, this may take too long for many applications. An alternative solution is to augment the vehicles in the constellation with onboard GPS transmitters (pseudolites). This augmentation will then allow relative vehicle motion to be used as an initialization tool. An obvious question then is, what are the “best” maneuvers to make in order to initialize the biases in minimum time? This paper develops a measure of the formation bias observability, and presents two algorithms to develop optimized initialization maneuvers.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 12th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1999) September 14 - 17, 1999 Nashville, TN
Pages:	459 - 468
Cite this article:	Olsen, Eric A., Park, Chan-Woo, How, Jonathan P., "Carrier-phase Bias Initialization for Formation Flying Vehicles with Onboard Pseudolites 1," Proceedings of the 12th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1999), Nashville, TN, September 1999, pp. 459-468.
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