Development and Testing of a High-Rate Air-to-Air Relative Navigation System for UAV Refueling

C. Spinelli, J. Raquet, B. Kish

Abstract:	This paper describes the design and testing of a high-speed, real-time kinematic, precise differential GPS positioning system for use in airborne applications such as automated aerial-refueling and close formation flying. Although many of the current ambiguity resolution techniques use the residuals from the least squares position estimation to determine the true ambiguity set, this paper presents a novel approach to the ambiguity resolution problem, called the minimum indicator. Instead of assuming the ambiguity set with the lowest residuals is the true set, other special characteristics of the residuals are examined. This increases the confidence that the algorithm has selected the true ambiguity set. The end result was the first-ever successful 6-degree of freedom, in-flight demonstration of close formation flight, culminating in over 11 hours of close formation flying with a mean radial spherical error of 3.3 centimeters (0.108 feet).
Published in:	Proceedings of the 19th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2006) September 26 - 29, 2006 Fort Worth Convention Center Fort Worth, TX
Pages:	686 - 695
Cite this article:	Spinelli, C., Raquet, J., Kish, B., "Development and Testing of a High-Rate Air-to-Air Relative Navigation System for UAV Refueling," Proceedings of the 19th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2006), Fort Worth, TX, September 2006, pp. 686-695.
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