AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION USING THE GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM AND AN ATTITUDE AND HEADING REFERENCE SYSTEM

摘要

A vehicle navigation technique uses a receiver for signals of a global positioning system to produce a first position indication and a first velocity indication. An attitude and heading reference system employs accelerometers and gyroscopes oriented along three axes. The raw signals from the accelerometers and gyroscopes are used to derive a second position indication and a second velocity value. A Kalman filter function is applied to the first and second position indications and to the first and second velocity indications to thereby produce a present position indication and a present velocity indication. The Kalman filter function exploits GPS data to corrects periodic drift in the position and velocity indications derived form the accelerometers and gyroscopes by calculating accelerometer and gyroscope biases, thereby enabling relatively inexpensive devices to be utilized.