Techniques to Achieve Ultra-Precise Attitude Determination for Large Baselines

Steven Karels, Thomas Macdonald, Mats Viggh, Robert Balla

Abstract:	TASC recently completed a study for the Ground Based Radar (GBR) program to investigate techniques to achieve ultra-precise attitude determination for relatively large antenna baselines (5-10 meters). GBR is a Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) program currently under development. The GBR program requires that the earth-centered orientation of the large phased array radar antenna be accurately known for target registration purposes. Attitude determination accuracy is limited by the phase noise of the GPS receiver(s) for small (1 meter separation) GPS antenna baselines. For the GBR application, the GPS receiving antennas are to be mounted on the GBR antenna support structure at maximum rigid separation to achieve the best possible azimuth accuracy. However, as the GPS antenna baseline separation is increased, differences in multipath conditions become the predominant error source. A technique was developed for estimating the multipath effects and to compensate for them, thus substantially improving the obtainable accuracy for large baseline antenna separations. Simulation results indicate that the technique works extremely well for a single, dominant multipath reflecting surface and when the multipath geometry is stationary, as it would be with a ground-based phased array radar antenna. This paper presents a comparison between the expected attitude accuracy to be obtained in a representative multipath scenario with and without applying the new multipatb compensation technique.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 7th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1994) September 20 - 23, 1994 Salt Palace Convention Center Salt Lake City, UT
Pages:	667 - 673
Cite this article:	Karels, Steven, Macdonald, Thomas, Viggh, Mats, Balla, Robert, "Techniques to Achieve Ultra-Precise Attitude Determination for Large Baselines," Proceedings of the 7th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1994), Salt Lake City, UT, September 1994, pp. 667-673.
Full Paper:	ION Members/Non-Members: 1 Download Credit Sign In