Instrumentation Design and Analysis for Balloon-Borne Gravimetry and Attitude Determination Using GPS and INS

Thomas F. Doyle, Peter Nicolaides Jorge I. Galdos, Christopher Jekeli

Abstract:	The Air Force has a project to measure the gravity vector and the attitude of a baseline using balloon-borne instrumentation consisting of multiple Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers and a strapdown inertial navigation system (INS). Precise carrier phase data from the onboard GPS receivers, together with GPS data from ground receivers, will be used to determine the total acceleration of the balloon as the INS will sense the non-gravitational acceleration. Estimation of the gravitational perturbations will be performed post-flight. Data from the GPS receivers will also be used to determine the attitude of the instrumentation platform in order to reduce the effects of gravity on the estimates of the horizontal components of the gravity anomaly. The paper describes the integrated design for the instrumentation of the balloon-borne project. The instrumentation suite, which includes a prototype Rockwell High Accuracy Ring Laser Gyro (HARLG) IMU, two GPS receivers manufactured by Ashtech, and a ruggedized IBM-compatible personal computer, is described in terms of the mechanical, electrical and power requirements for a high altitude, 10 hour experiment. A proof of concept ground-based experiment pertaining to GPS-based acceleration and attitude determination is presented.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 1993 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 20 - 22, 1993 Parc 55 Hotel San Francisco, CA
Pages:	519 - 533
Cite this article:	Doyle, Thomas F., Galdos, Peter Nicolaides Jorge I., Jekeli, Christopher, "Instrumentation Design and Analysis for Balloon-Borne Gravimetry and Attitude Determination Using GPS and INS," Proceedings of the 1993 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, San Francisco, CA, January 1993, pp. 519-533.
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