Expanding the Performance Envelope of GPS-Based Attitude Determination

Clark E. Cohen and Bradford W. Parkinson

Abstract:	The advent of GPS-based attitude determination offers the potential for significant cost savings in applications where inertial guidance has traditionally been the standard approach. We report new experimental results supporting advances in expanding the performance of attitude determination based on GPS. Attitude is measured by differential measurements of GPS carrier phase between two or more antermas. The performance envelope may be characterized in terms of accuracy and bandwidth, both functions of application-specific parameters such as antenna spacing and carrier-to-noise ratio. The goals of the research reported here are to uantitatively identify the factors ultimately limiting performance ‘and to offer approaches and techniques through which the theoretical limits of the performance envelope may be reached. Experimental results are included. Factors limiting performance are multipath, carrier-to-noise ratio, and integer resolution. Techniques are described for ameliorating multipath and increasing the bandwidth of differential carrier phase tracking. A family of new ‘Eigenaxis” methods for resolving the integer ambiguities is presented. Real time processing techniques are described which make possible survey-level accuracy attitude determination in high dynamic applications (such as high performance jet aircraft) based exclusively on GPS.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 4th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1991) September 11 - 13, 1991 Albuquerque, NM
Pages:	1001 - 1012
Cite this article:	Cohen, Clark E., Parkinson, Bradford W., "Expanding the Performance Envelope of GPS-Based Attitude Determination," Proceedings of the 4th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1991), Albuquerque, NM, September 1991, pp. 1001-1012.
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