Education and Research in Navigation at University FAF Munich

Bernd Eissfeller and Guenter W. Hein

Abstract:	The University of the Federal Armed Forces was founded in 1973 in order to attract young women and men for a 12 year long service as an officer in the Bundeswehr and to provide them with an academic degree (M.Sc.), which is helpful for both their military and possibly their civil career after the service. Currently About 3000 students are enrolled at this campus university. They have the choice among seven mainly engineering faculties. The University FAF is in principle a private University under Bavarian law subordinated by the German Department of Defense. In opposite to similar US and UK institutions it is not a military academy, i.e. the academic staff of it is set-up by civil professors and research associates, whereas the students are organized in a typical military hierarchy. The study year is partitioned in three 12 week study courses. Research and education in navigation is performed mainly (now for 20 years) at the Institute of Geodesy and Navigation, which belongs to the study course of geo-informatics and geodesy in the faculty of civil engineering. The training in the field of navigation goes along two major lines : Satellite geodesy and navigation including signal processing. Main topics in satellite geodesy are precise orbit determination and positioning. Navigation includes five courses with a focus on GPS and Galileo, inertial navigation, ground-based methods, integrated systems, stochastic processes and Kalman filtering. From the beginning on (1984) the Institute of Geodesy and Navigation was strongly committed to research in navigation. The staff is active since the late 80.s in the U.S. ION and the German Institute of Navigation. Currently 15 externally funded research associates are working in four research areas : Galileo & GNSS-2, GNSS S/W-Receiver, Sensor Fusion, Special Projects. The external research budget is on the order of about 1 M US $ per year. Typical customers are space, aviation and research agencies and European space and system industry. The hot research topics among others are the following : Galileo signal design, Galileo S/W-Receiver, tight and deep GPS/INS integration by use of MEMS technology. Efforts in in-door location are under way. Research and education is supported by two laboratories : The GNSS laboratory and the INS laboratory. In the GNSS laboratory about 50 GNSS receivers, two pseudolites, a permanent GPS reference station, a Cesium standard and a Spirent Signal Simulator are available. In the INS laboratory two 3-axes turn- tables are operated. In the paper a detailed overview about the organization, education and research areas and future developments will be presented.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 60th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (2004) June 7 - 9, 2004 Dayton Marriott Hotel Dayton, OH
Pages:	230 - 239
Cite this article:	Eissfeller, Bernd, Hein, Guenter W., "Education and Research in Navigation at University FAF Munich," Proceedings of the 60th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (2004), Dayton, OH, June 2004, pp. 230-239.
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