An Alternative Filter Approach to Integrate Satellite Navigation and Inertial Sensors

Jorg F. Wagner, Giinther Kasties, Michael Klotz

Abstract:	The classical ways of aiding inertial navigation by means of satellite navigation emerged from concepts that combined complete inertial navigation systems with other radio navigation instruments at comparatively low update rates. In addition, this development took place when the computational effort for the algorithms involved was one of the most important limiting factors. Finally, the inertial sensors considered at that time were mainly of the high precision type. On the other hand, systems based on low-cost inertial sensors are a significantly more interesting complement to satellite navigation instruments, which nowadays provide relatively high update rates. Due to constantly decreasing prices of all of these elements, the combination of inertial measurement units and satellite navigation receivers became more and more a subject of new developments. Nevertheless, these activities are still mostly based to a high degree on the classical methods mentioned above. The paper presents an alternative approach which differs from the usual techniques applied to the aiding of inertial instruments. Besides the design of the necessary filter, the used coordinate systems, the system and aiding models, and the issues of possible certification according to aircraft requirements are addressed. In addition, the aiding sensors involved are not restricted to satellite navigation receivers. These aspects are illustrated by means of experimental data based on inertial measurements and differential GPS. It is intended to demonstrate by means of the presented approach that there is still a significant potential of improvements for aiding inertial sensor systems by external measurements and especially by satellite navigation techniques. It is further emphasized that the design of future low-cost inertial sensors should more strongly consider the complementary properties of satellite navigation receivers as well as the filter techniques used for the integration of the different measurement principles.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 1997 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 14 - 16, 1997 Loews Santa Monica Hotel Santa Monica, CA
Pages:	141 - 150
Cite this article:	Wagner, Jorg F., Kasties, Giinther, Klotz, Michael, "An Alternative Filter Approach to Integrate Satellite Navigation and Inertial Sensors," Proceedings of the 1997 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, Santa Monica, CA, January 1997, pp. 141-150.
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