Tactical nagivation and communication system
First Claim
1. The method of navigation in a defined area for community of vehicles including a control vehicle and at least one user vehicle comprising the steps of:
- causing said control vehicle to establish a relative grid coordinate system covering the defined area;
causing said control vehicle to transmit by radio relative grid origin and alignment data to each user vehicle;
causing said control vehicle and each user vehicle to periodically establish their respective positions in the relative grid coordinate system by radio range measurements;
navigating said control vehicle and each user vehicle by inertial navigation during the time periods between the periodic radio range measurements; and
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Accused Products
Abstract
Method and apparatus are provided for the tactical nagivation and communiion of a community of aircraft. Each of the aircraft in the community is provided with an inertial navigation system capable of providing accurate short term navigational information and a time synchronized ranging system capable of providing accurate long term navigational information. One of the aircraft is designated as the airborne control unit and establishes a relative grid coordinate system within which the community of aircraft operate. The origin of the relative grid is established by the airborne control unit. When stationary ground time synchronized ranging system units are present, highly accurate georeferenced information may be supplied to the airborne control unit by operation of its time synchronized ranging system. When such ground units are not present, accurate georeferenced information may be obtained by the airborne controller from navigational systems such as satellite, Loran or Omega systems. The remaining or "user" aircraft in the community determine their position in the relative grid by interrogating the airborne control unit with their time synchronized ranging systems. A Kalman filter technique is employed to update the short term navigational information derived from the inertial navigation system in each user aircraft with the long term navigational information obtained from the time synchronized ranging system, so that the highly accurate georeferenced navigational information from the airborne control unit is provided to each member of the community of user aircraft. Novel computer programming permits each aircraft in the community to derive navigational information having the best characteristics of navigational information available from several sources, so that very accurate navigation in the area defined by the relative grid is made possible. The system of the invention may also perform communication and identification functions for the members of the tactical community.
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Citations
18 Claims
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1. The method of navigation in a defined area for community of vehicles including a control vehicle and at least one user vehicle comprising the steps of:
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causing said control vehicle to establish a relative grid coordinate system covering the defined area; causing said control vehicle to transmit by radio relative grid origin and alignment data to each user vehicle; causing said control vehicle and each user vehicle to periodically establish their respective positions in the relative grid coordinate system by radio range measurements; navigating said control vehicle and each user vehicle by inertial navigation during the time periods between the periodic radio range measurements; and - View Dependent Claims (3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13)
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- 2. periodically updating the navigation information of each user vehicle by combining such inertial information with navigation information transmitted by radio by said control vehicle.
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12. A navigation system for community of vehicles including a control vehicle and at least one user vehicle operating in a defined area comprising:
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computer means on said control vehicle programmed to establish a relative grid coordinate system covering a defined area; a time synchronized ranging system in said control vehicle and each user vehicle for making radio range measurements between each of said vehicles and for transmitting relative grid origin and alignment data from the control vehicle to each user vehicle comprising; (1) means for generating a cyclically recurring series of sequential time slots; (2) means for maintaining the series of sequential time slots generated by each user vehicle in synchronism with the series of sequential time slots generated by the control vehicle; (3) means on each of said vehicles for transmitting digitally encoded radio ranging synchronism at a predetermined time during a different one of said time slots so that each of said vehicles has a unique time slot for such transmission, the transmission of said control vehicle transmitting said relative grid origin and alignment data as a digitally encoded serial data message following the radio ranging signal transmitted by the control vehicle during the unique time slot assigned to the control vehicle; (4) means on each of said vehicles for receiving digitally encoded radio ranging signals transmitted from the remaining vehicles in said community during the unique time slots assigned to said remaining vehicles and measuring the time of arrival of each such received signal to determine the range between the receiving vehicles and each of said remaining vehicles; (5) inertial navigation means in said control vehicle and each user vehicle for providing inertial navigation signals for navigating each vehicle in a geographic coordinate system; (6) means in said time synchronized ranging system for transmitting the geographic grid information system of the control vehicle to each user vehicle; (7) computer means on each user vehicle to update the inertial navigation system of the user vehicle with the geographic grid navigation information received from the control vehicle to provide hybrid navigation signals for the navigation of the user vehicles, whereby each user vehicle is provided with relative grid navigation information for navigation in the relative grid established by the control vehicle, and said control vehicle and each user vehicle may operate in either or both the relative grid and geographic grid coordinate systems. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
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Specification