A Tracking System for Low Dynamic Vehicles in a Harsh Environment

Kathy Foster and Alan Trimble

Abstract:	This paper describes the project of tracking the America’s Cup racing yachts for live television broadcast. The heart of the project consisted of designing the system with specific requirements, and then refining it in an environment that could not be simulated, i. e. , the races. The system consisted of three principle components: a GPS receiver and a transmit and receive radio modem on each yacht, a base station that transmitted differential corrections and received position reports from the yachts, and a graphics system that displayed the position, speed, and the course of the yachts in a form useful for live television viewing. The package on the yachts consisted of a StarFinder” GPS receiver, a fluxgate compass, and a two way UHF communications radio. The base station consisted of a GPS differential base station, a StarFinder communications base, several UHF transmit and receive radio modems, and several telephone modems linked to the International Broadcast Center. The graphics system at the International Broadcast Center consisted of several networked graphics workstations that decoded the position reports, created real time graphics images of the racing, and converted the images to video. At first glance, this system seemed a simple task for off the shelf components. However, the interference from the harsh environment of San Diego and from all the other RF services associated with the races, the obstruction of the antennas on board the racing yachts, and even the syndicates’ interference made this a challenging task.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 5th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1992) September 16 - 18, 1992 Albuquerque, NM
Pages:	1147 - 1151
Cite this article:	Foster, Kathy, Trimble, Alan, "A Tracking System for Low Dynamic Vehicles in a Harsh Environment," Proceedings of the 5th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1992), Albuquerque, NM, September 1992, pp. 1147-1151.
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