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Attitude determination exploiting geometry constraints

  • US 7,292,185 B2
  • Filed: 10/04/2005
  • Issued: 11/06/2007
  • Est. Priority Date: 10/04/2005
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A system for determining at least one attitude angle of a rigid body comprising:

  • a plurality of antennas disposed on the rigid body, said plurality of antennas exhibiting known relative geometries and receptive to a plurality of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) satellite signals, said plurality of antennas partitioned into at least one baseline pair of antennas exhibiting a known physical geometry such that each antenna of said plurality of antennas is included in at least one antenna pair;

    a receiver in operable communication with said plurality of antennas and configured to receive said GNSS satellite signals therefrom;

    said receiver configured to;

    a) compute single- or double-difference carrier phases corresponding to one or more GNSS satellites for each of said at least one pair of antennas,b) construct a single Differential Carrier Phase Attitude (DCPA) equation based on constraints from said known relative geometries of each of said pairs of antennas,c) loop over and sequentially increment at least one coarse attitude angle,d) solve for an integer ambiguity vector that minimizes a residual error vector E when said coarse angle is substituted into the DCPA equation,e) for each integer ambiguity vector of step d) determine at least one refined attitude angle that minimizes a least-squares cost function with a cost function based upon the DCPA equation, andf) repeat steps c-e and save to computer memory any ambiguity vector that results in the cost function having a value that is less than a previous cost function value.

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