Integration of Cold-Atom Interferometry INS with Other Sensors

Aaron Canciani and John Raquet

Abstract:	Inertial navigation systems (INS) using cold-atom interferometryare currently under development. According to Jekeli and others, these systems will have error parameters three or four orders of magnitude more accurate thancurrent navigation grade INS. This significant increase in accuracy motivates the need to explore how these high accuracyinertial navigation systems can be integrated withother sensors. This paper focuses on methods of integratingcold atom interferometry INS with conventional navigationgrade INS, as well as with GPS. First, a frameworkfor integrating cold atom INS systems with conventionalINS systems is presented. In this framework, the navigationgrade INS is used to obtain the position, velocity, andattitude solution. Cold atom INS measurements, as well asnavigation grade INS measurements, are then brought intoa Kalman Filter which estimates the errors in the navigationsoluti The filter increases navigation accuracy by estimating the various error parameters of the navigation grade INS, such as biases and scale factors, which are modeled as states in the filter. The high accuracy of the cold atom interferometry INS measurements provides observability of these states. This paper then presents the results of an aircraft simulation using the proposed approach. Periodic outages are created in the cold atom interferometry INS that coincide with high dynamic maneuvers. The filter successfully estimates the navigation grade INS error states, such as biases and scale factors. This allows the final navigation solution to remain over an order of magnitude more accurate than the navigation grade INS solution alone, despite the fact that the cold atom interferometry INS is experiencing frequent outages. Next, the paper describes an approach for integrating cold atom interferometry INS with GPS. The proposed approach is a conventional loosely coupled INS - GPS. The cold atom interferometry INS is used to estimate the navigation solution with periodic GPS measurements being brought into a Kalman Filter to estimate the errors in the INS solution. The results of an aircraft simulation are then presented in order to analyze the effects of various length GPS outages. The errors using a cold atom interferometry INS are then compared to the errors of a navigation grade INS integrated in the same way. Conclusions are drawn on acceptable GPS outage times as well as improvements in overall navigation performance obtained by the use of a cold atom interferometry INS.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 2012 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 30 - 1, 2012 Marriott Newport Beach Hotel & Spa Newport Beach, CA
Pages:	151 - 185
Cite this article:	Canciani, Aaron, Raquet, John, "Integration of Cold-Atom Interferometry INS with Other Sensors," Proceedings of the 2012 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, Newport Beach, CA, January 2012, pp. 151-185.
Full Paper:	ION Members/Non-Members: 1 Download Credit Sign In