Positioning and navigation method and system thereof
First Claim
1. A positioning and navigation system, comprising:
- an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) providing inertial measurements including body angular rates and specific forces;
a GPS (Global Positioning System) processor receiving GPS satellite signals to derive position and velocity information and GPS raw measurements including pseudorange, carrier phase, and Doppler shift;
a magnetometer generating an Earth magnetic field measurement; and
a central navigation processor which comprises;
an INS (Inertial Navigation System) processor receiving said inertial measurements, including said body angular rates and said specific forces, for computing an inertial navigation solution which are position, velocity, acceleration, and attitude of a carrier carrying said positioning and navigation system;
a Kalman filter receiving said GPS raw measurements and said inertial navigation solution derived from said INS processor which is blended with said GPS raw measurements to derive a plurality of INS corrections and GPS corrections, wherein said INS corrections are fed back from said Kalman filter to said INS processor to correct said inertial navigation solution; and
an AHRS (Attitude and Heading Reference System) processor receiving said Earth magnetic field measurement from said magnetometer and said inertial measurements from said IMU which is blended with said Earth magnetic field measurement for computing an AHRS solution which are attitude and heading data of said carrier and being outputted as navigation solution when said GPS satellite signals are not available.
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A positioning and navigation method and system thereof can substantially solve the problems encountered in global positioning system-only and inertial navigation system-only, such as loss of global positioning satellite signal, sensibility to jamming and spoofing, and inertial solution'"'"'s drift over time, in which the velocity and acceleration from an inertial navigation processor and an attitude and heading solution from an AHRS processor are used to aid the code and carrier phase tracking of the global positioning system satellite signals, so as to enhance the performance of the global positioning and inertial integration system, even in heavy jamming and high dynamic environments and when the GPS satellite signals are not available.
142 Citations
36 Claims
-
1. A positioning and navigation system, comprising:
-
an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) providing inertial measurements including body angular rates and specific forces;
a GPS (Global Positioning System) processor receiving GPS satellite signals to derive position and velocity information and GPS raw measurements including pseudorange, carrier phase, and Doppler shift;
a magnetometer generating an Earth magnetic field measurement; and
a central navigation processor which comprises;
an INS (Inertial Navigation System) processor receiving said inertial measurements, including said body angular rates and said specific forces, for computing an inertial navigation solution which are position, velocity, acceleration, and attitude of a carrier carrying said positioning and navigation system;
a Kalman filter receiving said GPS raw measurements and said inertial navigation solution derived from said INS processor which is blended with said GPS raw measurements to derive a plurality of INS corrections and GPS corrections, wherein said INS corrections are fed back from said Kalman filter to said INS processor to correct said inertial navigation solution; and
an AHRS (Attitude and Heading Reference System) processor receiving said Earth magnetic field measurement from said magnetometer and said inertial measurements from said IMU which is blended with said Earth magnetic field measurement for computing an AHRS solution which are attitude and heading data of said carrier and being outputted as navigation solution when said GPS satellite signals are not available. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29)
-
-
30. A positioning and navigation method, comprising the steps of:
-
(a) receiving a plurality of global positioning system satellite signals to derive position and velocity information and a plurality of global positioning system (GPS) raw measurements, including pseudorange, carrier phase, and Doppler shift, of a carrier;
(b) sending said GPS raw measurements to a central navigation processor from a GPS (Global Positioning System) processor;
(c) receiving a plurality of inertial measurements including body angular rates and specific forces from a IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit);
(d) seeding said inertial measurements from said IMU to an INS (Inertial Navigation System) processor of said central navigation processor for computing an inertial navigation solution, which are position, velocity, acceleration, and attitude of said carrier;
(e) receiving an Earth magnetic field measurement from a magnetometer;
(f) sending said Earth magnetic field measurement from said magnetometer to an AHRS (Attitude and Heading Reference System) processor of said central navigation processor;
(g) sending said inertial measurements, including said body angular rates and said specific forces, from said IMU to said AHRS processor to blend with said Earth magnetic field measurement for computing an AHRS solution which are attitude and heading data of said carrier;
(h) blending an inertial navigation solution derived from said INS processor and said GPS raw measurements from said GPS processor in a Kalman filter to derive a plurality of INS corrections and GPS corrections; and
(i) feeding back said INS corrections from said Kalman filter to said INS processor to correct said inertial navigation solution. - View Dependent Claims (31, 32, 33, 34, 35)
(j) outputting said AHRS solution as navigation data through an I/O interface when said GPS satellite signals are not available.
-
-
32. The method, as recited in claim 30, after the step (i), further comprising the steps of:
-
injecting said GPS raw measurements from said GPS processor, said inertial navigation solution from said INS processor, and said inertial corrections and said GPS corrections from said Kalman filter into a carrier phase integer ambiguity resolution module to fix a plurality of GPS satellite signal carrier phase integer ambiguity numbers; and
sending said GPS satellite signal carrier phase integer numbers from said carrier phase integer ambiguity resolution module to said Kalman filter to derive a further improved navigation solution.
-
-
33. The method, as recited in claim 31, after the step (j) further comprising the steps of:
-
injecting said GPS raw measurements from said GPS processor, said inertial navigation solution from said INS processor, and said inertial corrections and said GPS corrections from said Kalman filter into a carrier phase integer ambiguity resolution module to fix a plurality of GPS satellite signal carrier phase integer ambiguity numbers; and
sending said GPS satellite signal carrier phase integer numbers from said carrier phase integer ambiguity resolution module to said Kalman filter to derive a further improved navigation solution.
-
-
34. The method, as recited in claim 30, 31, 32, or 33, wherein said Kalman filter is a robust Kalman filter.
-
35. The method, as recited in claim 31, wherein said AHRS processor comprises an angular increment and velocity increment processing module which receives said body angular rates and specific forces from said IMU to produce three-axis angular increment values and three-axis velocity increment values;
- wherein said three-axis angular increment values from said angular increment and velocity increment processing module and coarse angular rate bias obtained from an IMU calibration procedure at a high data rate in short interval are connected to a coning correction module for computing coning effect errors in said coning correction module using said three-axis angular increment values and coarse angular rate bias and outputting three-axis coning effect terms and three-axis angular increment values at reduced data rate in long interval, which are called three-axis long-interval angular increment values, into an angular rate compensation module;
wherein said coning effect errors and three-axis long-interval angular increment values from said coning correction module and angular rate device misalignment parameters and fine angular rate bias from said IMU calibration procedure are connected to said angular rate compensation module for compensating definite errors in said three-axis long-interval angular increment values using said coning effect errors, angular rate device misalignment parameters, fine angular rate bias, and coning correction scale factor, and outputting said real three-axis angular increments to an alignment rotation vector computation module;
wherein paid three-axis velocity increment values from said angular increment and velocity increment processing module and acceleration device misalignment, and acceleration device bias from said IMU calibration procedure are connected into an accelerometer compensation module for compensating said definite errors in three-axis velocity increments using said acceleration device misalignment, and accelerometer bias;
outputting said compensated three-axis velocity increments to a level acceleration computation module;
wherein by using said compensated three-axis angular increments from said angular rate compensation module, an east damping rate increment from an east damping rate computation module, a north damping rate increment from a north damping rate computation module, and vertical damping rate increment from a vertical damping rate computation module, a quaternion, which is a vector representing rotation angle of said carrier, is updated, and said updated quaternion is connected to a direction cosine matrix computation module for computing said direction cosine matrix, by using said updated quaternion;
wherein said computed direction cosine matrix is connected to said level acceleration computation module and an attitude and heading angle extract module for extracting attitude and heading angle as said AHRS solution, using said direction cosine matrix from said direction cosine matrix computation module;
wherein said compensated three-axis velocity increments are connected to said level acceleration computation module for computing level velocity increments using said compensated three-axis velocity increments from said acceleration compensation module and said direction cosine matrix from said direction cosine matrix computation module;
wherein said level velocity increments are connected to said east damping rate computation module for computing east damping rate increments using said north velocity increment of said input level velocity increments from said level acceleration computation module;
wherein said level velocity increments are connected to said north damping rate computation module for computing north damping rate increments using said east velocity increment of said level velocity increments from said level acceleration computation module;
wherein said earth magnetic field measurements in three axes from said magnetometer and attitude data from said attitude and heading angle extract module are connected to a magnetic heading computation module to produce a measured magnetic heading angle;
wherein said heading angle from said attitude and heading angle extract module and said measured magnetic heading angle from said magnetic heading computation module are connected to said vertical damping rate computation module for computing vertical damping rate increments;
wherein said east damping rate increments, north damping rate increments, and vertical damping rate are fed back to said alignment rotation vector computation module to damp said drift of errors of said attitude and heading angles.
- wherein said three-axis angular increment values from said angular increment and velocity increment processing module and coarse angular rate bias obtained from an IMU calibration procedure at a high data rate in short interval are connected to a coning correction module for computing coning effect errors in said coning correction module using said three-axis angular increment values and coarse angular rate bias and outputting three-axis coning effect terms and three-axis angular increment values at reduced data rate in long interval, which are called three-axis long-interval angular increment values, into an angular rate compensation module;
-
36. A positioning and navigation method, comprising the steps of:
-
(a) receiving a plurality of inertial measurements including body angular rates and specific forces from an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit);
(b) sending said inertial measurements from said IMU to an INS (Inertial Navigation System) processor of a central navigation processor for computing an inertial navigation solution, which are position, velocity, acceleration, and attitude of a carrier;
(c) receiving an Earth magnetic field measurement from a magnetometer;
(d) sending said Earth magnetic field measurement from said magnetometer to an AHRS (Attitude and Heading Reference System) processor of said central navigation processor;
(e) sending said inertial measurements from said IMU to said AHRS processor of said central navigation processor to blend with said Earth magnetic field measurement for computing an AHRS solution which are attitude and heading data of said carrier;
(f) sending said inertial navigation solution from said INS processor and said AHRS solution from said AHRS processor to an I/O interface, so as to provide navigation data and attitude and heading data for said carrier;
wherein said AHRS processor comprises an angular increment and velocity increment processing module which receives said body angular rates and specific forces from said IMU to produce three-axis angular increment values and three-axis velocity increment values;
wherein said three-axis angular increment values from said angular increment and velocity increment processing module and coarse angular rate bias obtained from an IMU calibration procedure at a high data rate in short interval are connected to a coning correction module for computing coning effect errors in said coning correction module using said three-axis angular increment values and coarse angular rate bias and outputting three-axis coning effect terms and three-axis angular increment values at reduced data rate in long interval, which are called three-axis long-interval angular increment values, into an angular rate compensation module;
wherein said coning effect errors and three-axis long-interval angular increment values from said coning correction module and angular rate device misalignment parameters and fine angular rate bias from said IMU calibration procedure are connected to said angular rate compensation module for compensating definite errors in said three-axis long-interval angular increment values using said coning effect errors, angular rate device misalignment parameters, fine angular rate bias, and coning correction scale factor, and outputting said real three-axis angular increments to an alignment rotation vector computation module;
wherein said three-axis velocity increment values from said angular increment and velocity increment processing module and acceleration device misalignment, and acceleration device bias from said IMU calibration procedure are connected into an accelerometer compensation module for compensating said definite errors in three-axis velocity increments using said acceleration device misalignment, and accelerometer bias;
outputting said compensated three-axis velocity increments to a level acceleration computation module;
wherein by using said compensated three-axis angular increments from said angular rate compensation module, an east damping rate increment from an east damping rate computation module, a north damping rate increment from a north damping rate computation module, and vertical damping rate increment from a vertical damping rate computation module, a quaternion, which is a vector representing rotation angle of said carrier, is updated, and said updated quaternion is connected to a direction cosine matrix computation module for computing said direction cosine matrix, by using said updated quaternion;
wherein said computed direction cosine matrix is connected to said level acceleration computation module and an attitude and heading angle extract module for extracting attitude and heading angle as said AHRS solution, using said direction cosine matrix from said direction cosine matrix computation module;
wherein said compensated three-axis velocity increments are connected to said level acceleration computation module for computing level velocity increments using said compensated three-axis velocity increments from said acceleration compensation module and said direction cosine matrix from said direction cosine matrix computation module;
wherein said level velocity increments are connected to said east damping rate computation module for computing east damping rate increments using said north velocity increment of said input level velocity increments from said level acceleration computation module;
wherein said level velocity increments are connected to said north damping rate computation module for computing north damping rate increments using said east velocity increment of said level velocity increments from said level acceleration computation module;
wherein said earth magnetic field measurements in three axes from said magnetometer and attitude data from said attitude and heading angle extract module are connected to a magnetic heading computation module to produce a measured magnetic heading angle;
wherein said heading angle from said attitude and heading angle extract module and said measured magnetic heading angle from said magnetic heading computation module are connected to said vertical damping rate computation module for computing vertical damping rate increments;
wherein said east damping rate increments, north damping rate increments, and vertical damping rate are fed back to said alignment rotation vector computation module to damp said drift of errors of said attitude and heading angles.
-
Specification