Containment Limits for Free-Inertial Coast

J.L. Farrell, F. van Graas

Abstract:	The paramount importance of safety understandably exerts predominating influence over the establishment of requirements for accuracy and integrity. A central concept involved in setting those requirements is a containment limit; a low probability is assigned for the prospect of flying outside a specified volume during a given phase of flight. Taken literally, that imposes a demand to substantiate maximum allowable values for Total System Error (TSE), a major component of which is navigation error. Risk analyses intended to show satisfaction of those demands are often based on models using gaussian distributions for error contributors, with overbounding to compensate for any possible nonconformance. For freeinertial coast applications, a rigorous mathematical method based on Extreme Value Distributions can achieve overbounding for data sets that are smaller by orders of magnitude than those required for “visual” or binomial bounding techniques. Extreme Value Theory (EVT) is summarized followed by the application of EVT to derive containment limits for free-inertial coast. Not all inertial error sources, such as vibration-sensitive and misalignment errors, are known or specified, thus justifying the application of EVT to establish containment limits with confidence.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 23rd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2010) September 21 - 24, 2010 Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon Portland, OR
Pages:	1490 - 1497
Cite this article:	Farrell, J.L., van Graas, F., "Containment Limits for Free-Inertial Coast," Proceedings of the 23rd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2010), Portland, OR, September 2010, pp. 1490-1497.
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