Carrier Phase DGPS for Autonomous Airborne Refueling

Samer Khanafseh, Boris Pervan and Glenn Colby

Abstract:	For Autonomous Airborne Refueling (AAR) to be possible, the position of the receiving aircraft relative to the tanker must be known very accurately in real time. In addition, to ensure safety and operational usefulness, the navigation architecture must also provide high levels of integrity, continuity, and availability. In this paper, we begin with the latest proposed Shipboard Relative GPS (SRGPS) navigation architecture, which uses Carrier Phase DGPS (CDGPS), and we exploit it as a preliminary basis for AAR navigation. However, the AAR mission is somewhat different from SRGPS because of the potentially severe sky blockage introduced by the tanker. Blockage models are presented and preliminary availability analyses for AAR are carried out using the SRGPS-derived navigation processing architecture. In this work, we analyze the AAR navigation problem, quantify system availability using SRGPS algorithms and investigate the benefits of ranging augmentation. Sensitivity analyses of availability with respect to different architecture elements and parameters are then performed. Finally, the analytical tools developed throughout this work were used to plan the AAR flight tests. The GPS and INS data collected were evaluated with offline GPS algorithms and used to validate the sky blockage model and simulations.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 2005 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 24 - 26, 2005 The Catamaran Resort Hotel San Diego, CA
Pages:	489 - 499
Cite this article:	Khanafseh, Samer, Pervan, Boris, Colby, Glenn, "Carrier Phase DGPS for Autonomous Airborne Refueling," Proceedings of the 2005 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, San Diego, CA, January 2005, pp. 489-499.
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