Aerospace Science and Technology 8 (2004) 627634

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Tightly coupled GPS/INS integration for missile applications
Tightly-coupled GPS/INS Integration fr unbemannte Fluggerte
Jan Wendel

, Gert F. Trommer
Institute of Systems Optimization, University of Karlsruhe, Kaiserstr. 12, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
Received 8 March 2004; received in revised form 7 July 2004; accepted 22 July 2004
Available online 25 August 2004
Abstract
An approach to enhance the performance of tightly coupled GPS/INS systems is described. First, the advantages of tightly coupled systems
compared to loosely coupled systems are claried. Then, it is shown in hardware-in-the-loop tests and in a test drive that processing time
differenced carrier phase measurements instead of delta-range measurements results in an increased velocity and attitude accuracy for the
tightly coupled system, which is of great importance in the beginning of a time interval with purely inertial navigation, e.g. when GPS is lost
due to jamming. A measurement equation is derived allowing to process the time differenced carrier phase measurements in the navigation
Kalman lter. Finally, the proposed method is applied to missile navigation systems, where signicant vibrations enter the inertial sensor
data.
2004 Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.
Zusammenfassung
In diesem Beitrag wird ein Verfahren vorgestellt, mit dem die Performance von tightly coupled GPS/INS Systemen gesteigert werden
kann. Zunchst werden die Vorteile der tightly coupled GPS/INS Systeme im Vergleich zu loosely coupled Systemen herausgearbeitet.
Anschlieend wird mit Hardware-in-the-Loop Tests und einer Testfahrt gezeigt, dass die Verarbeitung von Differenzen auf einander fol-
gender Trgerphasenmessungen anstelle der blicherweise verwendeten delta-range Messungen zu einer Steigerung der Geschwindigkeits-
und Lagegenauigkeit bei tightly coupled Systemen fhrt, was besonders zu Beginn einer Inertialnavigationsphase, z.B. wenn GPS auf-
grund von Jamming nicht genutzt werden kann, von Bedeutung ist. Es wird eine Messgleichung vorgestellt, die es erlaubt die zeitlichen
Trgerphasendifferenzen direkt im Navigationslter zu verarbeiten. Abschlieend wird die Einsetzbarkeit des vorgeschlagenen Verfahrens in
Flugkrpernavigationssystemen untersucht, die teilweise heftigen Vibrationen ausgesetzt sind, welche in die Inertialsensordaten eingehen.
2004 Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.
Keywords: GPS/INS integration; Kalman lter; Carrier phase measurements
Schlsselwrter: GPS/INS Integration; Kalman Filter; Trgerphasenmessungen
1. Introduction
In integrated navigation systems, different navigation
sensors are combined. Exploiting the complementary char-
*
Corresponding author. Phone +49 721 6082639; Fax +49 721
6082623.
E-mail address: jan.wendel@ite.uni-karlsruhe.de (J. Wendel).
acteristics of these sensors, the resulting system offers a
signicantly increased performance with respect to accu-
racy and robustness, compared to the stand-alone usage of
each component. Especially, the benet from integrating a
GPS receiver and an inertial navigation system (INS) is well
known: As the INS is not dependent on external information,
this component assures the continuous availability of a com-
plete navigation solution consisting of position, velocity and
attitude estimates. The growth of navigation errors with time
1270-9638/$ see front matter 2004 Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ast.2004.07.003
628 J. Wendel, G.F. Trommer / Aerospace Science and Technology 8 (2004) 627634
is prevented by using aiding information provided by the
GPS receiver. Mostly, the data fusion algorithm processes
GPS position and velocity information, which requires that
signals from at least four satellites are available.
Unmanned aerial vehicles as well as missiles have to op-
erate in an environment where the choice of the ight path or
hostile jamming leads to a reduced availability of GPS satel-
lite signals. In this case, tightly coupled GPS/INS systems
can provide a solution, where raw GPS data such as pseudo-
range and delta-range measurements are processed in the
data fusion algorithm. Therefore, if the number of available
satellite signals is not sufcient to calculate a GPS position
and velocity measurement, a limited aiding of the INS using
the pseudorange and delta-range measurements to the re-
maining satellites is still possible. In this situation, a loosely
coupled system processing GPS position and velocity infor-
mation remains unaided and as a result, the navigation errors
grow according to the inertial navigation performance of the
system.
This contribution focuses on the improvement of a tightly
coupled GPS/INS system by using GPS carrier phase mea-
surements instead of delta-range measurements. This im-
provement can be expected because carrier phase mea-
surements are usually less noisy than delta-range measure-
ments. The problem by using carrier phase measurements
are the unknown integer ambiguities, which prohibit a direct
processing analog to a pseudorange processing. A xing of
the integer ambiguities is only possible if corrections from
a DGPS base station are available, which is not the case for
most unmanned aerial vehicles. This problem is overcome
by forming time differences of carrier phase measurements,
so that the constant integer ambiguities are eliminated. Addi-
tionally, a method for processing the time differenced carrier
phase measurements in a Kalman lter is described. Test
drive results illustrate the usefulness of this approach. In or-
der to verify the approach in a missile-typical scenario where
the INS is exposed to severe vibrations, hardware-in-the-
loop tests were performed. In all cases, an improvement of
performance was observed, as expected.
2. GPS/INS integration architectures
Kalman lters are widely used in integrated navigation
systems to merge the data of the navigation sensors. The
Kalman lter estimates the errors of the INS navigation so-
lution. The subsequent correction of these errors assures the
long-term accuracy of the system. Additionally, the inertial
measurement unit (IMU) is calibrated. In the following, two
integration architectures are discussed which differ mainly
in the type of GPS information that is processed in the navi-
gation Kalman lter.
2.1. Loosely coupled vs. tightly coupled
Today, most of the integrated navigation systems are
loosely coupled systems: The position and velocity of the
vehicle estimated by the GPS receiver Kalman lter is
processed in the navigation Kalman lter to aid the INS,
which is known as decentralized or cascaded ltering, too.
This design option is often chosen because of its simplic-
ity, as the GPS receiver outputs are directly comparable with
the INS outputs. Unfortunately, the errors in the position and
velocity information provided by the GPS receiver Kalman
lter are time-correlated, which can cause a degradation in
performance or even instability of the navigation Kalman l-
ter, if these correlations are not considered by some means.
In the case of incomplete constellations, i.e. less than four
satellites in view, the output of the GPS receiver has to be
ignored completely, leaving the INS unaided [6].
Atightly coupled GPS/INS systemis characterized by the
fact that GPS pseudorange and delta-range measurements
are processed directly in the navigation Kalman lter [7].
For some authors, the aiding of the receiver tracking loops
using velocity information provided by the INS is an es-
sential characteristic of a tightly coupled system, too [9].
However, as this receiver aiding is possible in a loosely
coupled system, too, this topic is not addressed here any
further. The main advantage of a tightly coupled system is
that in the case of less than four visible satellites, a lim-
ited aiding of the INS with the raw GPS measurements to
the remaining satellites is still possible. This is of special
benet in a missile navigation system, which often has to
operate in a hostile environment where the reception of the
satellite signals is difcult due to jamming. Besides that,
tightly coupled systems offer increased integrity monitor-
ing possibilities. On the other hand, the need to handle
raw GPS data, e.g. the calculation of satellite clock cor-
rections or satellite positions and velocity from ephemeris
data, complicates the design process of a tightly coupled
system. Furthermore, at least two additional Kalman lter
states are required in order to estimate the GPS receiver
clock error ct and clock error drift cf . Another solution
is to process the differences of the raw measurements to
different space vehicles. This causes the building up cross-
correlations, which have to be considered in the data fusion
algorithm, see [3].
2.2. Hardware-in-the-loop test
Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) tests were performed in or-
der to compare the performance of two GPS/INS systems
based on loosely and tightly coupled architectures, respec-
tively. A GPS space segment simulator was used to generate
RF signals according to a predened trajectory, which were
transferred to a GPS receiver via an antenna cable. This GPS
receiver was interfaced with a PC used as navigation com-
puter, hosting the navigation Kalman lters. The data of a
tactical grade IMU was simulated according to the prede-
J. Wendel, G.F. Trommer / Aerospace Science and Technology 8 (2004) 627634 629
Fig. 1. Comparison of the overall position errors of a loosely and a tightly
coupled GPS/INS system, obtained in a HIL test.
ned trajectory, too. Additionally, the vibration environment
a missile is exposed to was taken into account by adding
time correlated noise to the inertial sensor data, using noise
process models that were obtained from the analysis of mis-
sile ight test data [10]. This vibration induced noise was
modeled in the navigation Kalman lters by a technique
given in [11], which avoids the usually required additional
shaping lter states and therefore keeping the computational
load reasonable.
Fig. 1 shows the position errors of the navigation solu-
tions of a loosely and a tightly coupled system obtained in
this HIL test. With four or more satellites available, both
systems show a comparable performance as the positions er-
rors are essentially dened by the GPS position accuracy.
During periods with less than four satellites available, the
growth of the position errors is signicantly slower for the
tightly coupled system. The rapid growth of the loosely
coupled system position errors has two reasons: First, the
vibration induced noise affects the inertial navigation per-
formance of the INS. Second, the time until the rst in-
complete constellation at t = 500 s was not sufcient to
achieve an accurate calibration of the IMU, so that the in-
ertial sensor biases contributed signicantly to the growth
of the position error. This also explains why during the
second and the third period with purely inertial navigation
of the loosely coupled system, starting at t = 800 s and
t = 1100 s, respectively, the growth of position error is
slower.
3. Performance improvement by carrier phase
processing
In the following a method is proposed, which allows to
further increase the performance of tightly coupled systems
by using carrier phase measurements instead of delta-range
measurements to aid the INS.
3.1. Carrier phase measurements
The measurement model of a GPS carrier phase measure-
ment can be expressed as
( +N) =r
SU
+ct +
cm
+
mp
+v
rcvr
, (1)
where denotes the measured carrier phase in cycles, N
is the integer phase ambiguity, is the carrier wavelength,
r
SU
is the distance between GPS antenna and satellite, ct
is the GPS receiver clock error in meters,
cm
are the com-
mon mode errors, e.g. ionosphere and ephemeris,
mp
is the
carrier-signal multipath and v
rcvr
is white receiver noise. Ex-
cept for the sign of the ionospheric error, the common mode
errors on a carrier phase measurement and on a pseudorange
measurement are essentially the same, whereas multipath
and receiver noise are much smaller for the carrier phase
measurement. Usually, the common mode errors are re-
moved by using corrections froma DGPS base station. Then,
if a xing of the integer phase ambiguities was success-
ful, the carrier phase measurements can be processed in the
navigation Kalman lter in the same way as a pseudorange
measurement, see [4,7]. However, for missile applications
the usage of a DGPS base station in sufcient proximity is
not possible. Instead, in the following it is exploited that the
common mode errors are slowly time-varying. Therefore it is
possible to remove these common mode errors almost com-
pletely by forming time differences of carrier phase mea-
surements from two successive epochs.
3.2. Time-differenced carrier phase
Triple differenced carrier phase measurements (TDCP)
are already used in a variety of applications, mostly for the
detection of cycle slips. TDCP measurements are obtained
by rst forming differences between the measurements of
a base station and a rover, second between different satel-
lites and nally between two successive epochs. With the
approach described here, only differences between two suc-
cessive carrier phase measurements valid at t
k
and t
k1
, re-
spectively, are formed. A DGPS base station is not used.
Such a time differenced carrier phase measurement can be
formulated as follows:
(
k

k1
) =r
SU,k
r
SU,k1
+ct
k
ct
k1
+v

k
. (2)
The remaining measurement error that is not removed by
forming time differences is denoted with v

k
. The constant
integer phase ambiguity is removed completely, and there-
fore an estimation of this quantity like in other approaches
is not necessary. In order to be able to derive a measure-
ment equation that is suitable to process the measurement
(
k

k1
) in the navigation Kalman lter, its relations to
the quantities of which the errors are estimated by the lter
have to be identied. These quantities are the three dimen-
sional position, velocity and attitude, the six inertial sensor
biases as well as receiver clock error and clock error drift.
From Fig. 2, following relation is obtained:
630 J. Wendel, G.F. Trommer / Aerospace Science and Technology 8 (2004) 627634
Fig. 2. Position of a GPS satellite and the GPS antenna at two successive
epochs with carrier phase measurements available.
r
SU,k
r
SU,k1
= e
T
k
r
SU,k
e
T
k1
r
SU,k1
e
T
k
( r
SU,k
r
SU,k1
) = e
T
k
(

S
k


b
k
). (3)
Hereby e
k
denotes the unit vector pointing from the GPS
antenna to the satellite,

S
k
is the displacement of the satellite
in the time interval t =t
k
t
k1
and

b
k
is the displacement
of the GPS-antenna in the same time interval. Combining
Eqs. (2) and (3) leads to
(
k

k1
) e
T
k

S
k
= e
T
k

b
k
+ct
k
ct
k1
+v

k
=
t
k
_
t
k1
e
T
k
v
n
eU
dt +
t
k
_
t
k1
cf dt +v

k
=
t
k
_
t
k1
e
T
k
v
n
eb
dt e
T
k
(C
n
b,k
C
n
b,k1
)

L
b
+
t
k
_
t
k1
cf dt +v

k
(4)
where v
n
eU
is the velocity of the GPS antenna with respect to
the Earth in navigation frame coordinates, v
n
eb
is the veloc-
ity of the vehicle body frame,

L
b
is the lever arm between
IMU and GPS antenna in body frame coordinates, and C
n
b
is
the direction cosine matrix (DCM) describing the transfor-
mation from body to navigation coordinates. With the skew
symmetric matrix
k
of the misorientation vector

k
and the
relation between true and estimated () DCM
C
n
b,k
=(I

C
n
b,k
(5)
the lever arm term can be reformulated:
(C
n
b,k
C
n
b,k1
)

L
b
= (I
k
)
_

L
n
k

L
n
k1
_
(
k

k1
)

L
n
k1
= (I
k
)

L
n
k
t

L
n
k1
. (6)
Inserting the differential equation describing the propagation
of the attitude errors with time,

n
in


+

C
n
b

b
ib
,
see [8], and exploiting that

L
n
k1

n
in,k

L
n
k
gives
(C
n
b,k
C
n
b,k1
)

L
b

L
n
k
+

L
n
k

k
+t
_

L
n
k1

C
n
b,k

b
ib,k
. (7)
So, the desired measurement equation for a time-differenced
carrier phase measurement is given by
(
k

k1
) e
T
k
_

S
k

L
n
k
_
=
t
k
_
t
k1
( e
T
k
v
n
eb
+cf ) dt
e
T
k
_

L
n
k

k
+t
_

L
n
k1

C
n
b,k

b
ib,k
_
+v

k
. (8)
On the right hand side of this measurement equation, the
integral term including GPS antenna velocity and receiver
clock error drift is usually dominant. However, ignoring the
lever arm terms when deriving a Kalman lter measurement
matrix can lead to poor estimation results e.g. in case of vehi-
cle rotations. Additionally, considering the lever arm speeds
up the estimation of the gyroscope biases
b
ib,k
.
The problem in the processing of this type of measure-
ment is, that in Eq. (8) a time integral occurs containing
quantities of which the errors are estimated by the lter. The
usual formof a Kalman lter measurement equation is given
by
y
k
=H
k
x
k
+ v
k
(9)
where the measurement matrix H describes the linear map-
ping between the system state x
k
at time t
k
and the current
measurement vector y
k
.
3.3. Kalman lter design
In principle it is possible to process the carrier phase
differences equation (8) by using a delayed state Kalman
lter [1]. However, this would be connected with several dis-
advantages: For the problemconsidered here, the covariance
matrix of the measurement noise of all carrier phase differ-
ences available at the current epoch has diagonal form. Us-
ing a delayed state Kalman lter, this diagonal form is lost.
Therefore, a sequential, scalar processing of these measure-
ments which is desirable because of numerical reasons is not
possible without an additional decorrelation procedure. This
results in a further increase in computational load, besides
the already increased computational load due to the usage of
a delayed state Kalman lter itself. Therefore a different ap-
proach was chosen, which originates from the processing of
TDCP measurements in [2,5].
J. Wendel, G.F. Trommer / Aerospace Science and Technology 8 (2004) 627634 631
A general formulation of a measurement equation involv-
ing a time integral is given by
y
k
=
t
k
_
t
k1
H x(t ) dt + v
k
. (10)
Considering the problemof processing time differenced car-
rier phase measurements, the measurement matrix H in
Eq. (10) selects from the system state vector the velocity
states weighted with the unit vector to the satellite, and
the clock drift state. This can be seen by comparison with
Eq. (8).
With the transition matrices
t ,t
k1
and
1
t
k
,t
k1
, the state
vector x(t ) can be expressed as
x(t ) =
t ,t
k1

1
t
k
,t
k1
x
k
. (11)
Inserting Eq. (11) in Eq. (10) and moving the time constant
terms outside of the integral allows to rewrite Eq. (10) in the
form of the typical Kalman lter measurement equation (9):
y
k
=
t
k
_
t
k1
H
t ,t
k1
dt
1
t
k
,t
k1
. ,, .
H

k
x
k
+ v
k
. (12)
Most GPS receivers provide measurements at a data rate of
1 Hz, while the navigation system state vector is updated at a
higher rate 1/t , e.g. the rate with which inertial sensor mea-
surements are available. In each subinterval i in between two
successive GPS receiver measurements, a transition matrix

it +t
k1
,(i1)t +t
k1
is calculated which is used to propa-
gate the navigation Kalman lter state vector covariance ma-
trix forward in time. These transition matrices can be used to
construct the measurement matrix H

k
. The matrix
1
t
k
,t
k1
is
calculated starting from an identity matrix at i =0 from

1
it +t
k1
,t
k1
=
1
(i1)t +t
k1
,t
k1

1
it +t
k1
,(i1)t +t
k1
. (13)
Starting from a zero-matrix, the integral term in Eq. (12) is
constructed:
it +t
k1
_
t
k1
H
t ,t
k1
dt =
(i1)t +t
k1
_
t
k1
H
t ,t
k1
dt
+H
it +t
k1

it +t
k1
,(i1)t +t
k1
t . (14)
The resulting measurement matrix H

k
allows to process the
time differenced carrier phase measurements equation (8) di-
rectly in the navigation Kalman lter. With this approach,
which is perfectly general and can be applied to any mea-
surement equation involving a time integral of state vector
components, the diagonal form of the measurement noise
covariance matrix is maintained, a scalar sequential mea-
surement processing is therefore possible without a previous
decorrelation required.
The performance of this approach compared to the aiding
with delta-range measurements was investigated in a HIL
test. Fig. 3 shows the velocity accuracy achieved by both
lters. Obviously, the velocity accuracy is increased by us-
ing time differenced carrier phase measurements instead of
delta-range measurements. It can also be seen that a de-
layed state Kalman lter in combination with a decorrelation
procedure and the time differenced carrier phase processing
achieves comparable results. The increase in velocity accu-
racy has a positive effect on attitude accuracy, too, as shown
in Fig. 4. During the rst part of the simulated trajectory, no
movement was assumed. Without horizontal accelerations,
the yaw angle is not observable, drifting around its initial-
ized value. This explains the rapid decrease in attitude error
in the acceleration phase starting at t =200 s.
Fig. 3. Overall velocity errors of tightly coupled systems processing delta-range or time differenced carrier phase measurements, obtained in a HIL test.
632 J. Wendel, G.F. Trommer / Aerospace Science and Technology 8 (2004) 627634
Fig. 4. Overall attitude errors of tightly coupled systems processing
delta-range or time differenced carrier phase measurements, obtained in a
HIL test.
4. Experimental verication
The practical value of the proposed aiding with time dif-
ferenced carrier phase measurements was proven in a test
drive with an experimental integrated GPS/INS system. This
system and the achieved results are described in the follow-
ing.
4.1. Navigation system hardware
An experimental verication is necessary to prove that
simulation and HIL test provide realistic results, because
simulated data can only approximate the environment in
which the navigation system operates. Especially, realistic
GPS multipath errors are hard to simulate.
The experimental integrated navigation system used in
the test drives is shown in Fig. 5. It consists of a GPS re-
ceiver, several IMUs, additional hardware which allows to
time-tag the IMU data with GPS time, and a power supply.
A Linux PC was used as navigation computer. This sys-
tem allows to log the navigation sensor data for an ofine
processing, but it is also possible to run navigation algo-
rithms in realtime. However, in order to assure identical con-
ditions for the comparison of delta-range and carrier-phase
processing, an ofine processing of logged data was chosen.
4.2. Test drive results
The problem with the analysis of the estimated naviga-
tion solutions is in opposite to HIL test and simulation
the lack of an ideal reference, which would be needed to
calculate the navigation errors directly. Therefore, indirect
measures of performance have to be used. A test drive tra-
jectory was chosen were the vehicle returned in the end to
its initial position. After a short period of time for northseek-
ing and initialization, delta-ranges or time differenced carrier
phase measurements, respectively, were used to aid the INS,
while the pseudorange data was ignored. The growth of posi-
tion error, that can be assessed fromthe comparison of initial
and nal position, is then a measure for the velocity accuracy
of the navigation solution. The position solutions obtained
in this test are shown in Fig. 6. It can be seen that starting
point and nal point are in better agreement for the aiding
with time differenced carrier phase measurements, therefore
at least the velocity accuracy of this approach is superior to
the delta-range processing.
Fig. 5. Experimental integrated navigation system used in the test drive.
J. Wendel, G.F. Trommer / Aerospace Science and Technology 8 (2004) 627634 633
Fig. 6. Test drive position solution by processing delta-range or time differ-
enced carrier phase measurements, without processing pseudorange mea-
surements.
Fig. 7. Test drive lter residuals by processing delta-range or time differ-
enced carrier phase measurements.
Fig. 8. Test drive overall velocity errors of the delta-range and the time
differenced carrier phase processing while the vehicle was at rest.
A further measure of performance are the lter residu-
als shown in Fig. 7, i.e. the difference between the available
measurements and predicted measurements, with the predic-
tion based on the a posteriori navigation solution. In the case
of delta-range measurements and time differenced carrier
phase measurements, the residuals are directly comparable.
Obviously, the aiding by means of the carrier phase produces
the smaller residuals. The increase in lter residual magni-
tude after 200 seconds can be explained by the fact that at
this point in time, the drive actually started. This is of course
connected to vibrations, while during the rst 200 seconds
the car was at rest.
Finally, the velocity errors can be calculated during pe-
riods were the vehicle is at rest. This was the case in the
beginning of the test drive, the corresponding velocity errors
are shown in Fig. 8. Again, the aiding with time differenced
carrier phase measurements produces superior results, as ex-
pected.
5. Application to missile navigation systems
The possibility to improve the performance of missile
navigation systems by using the proposed method was in-
vestigated in HIL-Tests.
5.1. Inuence of vibrations and dynamics
The processing of time differenced carrier phase mea-
surements instead of delta-range measurements allows to
increase the velocity accuracy of the navigation solution.
The improvement in position accuracy is negligible, as the
position accuracy is determined mainly by the pseudorange
measurements. However, the increase in velocity accuracy
leads to in increase in attitude accuracy, too. Velocity and
attitude accuracy in the beginning of a period with purely
inertial navigation, e.g. when GPS is lost because of jam-
ming, has a signicant inuence on the growth of navigation
errors with time, and is therefore of major importance. The
inuence of a velocity error on the position error growth is
obvious; an attitude error results in an inaccurate elimination
of the gravity sensed by the accelerometers in the strapdown
calculations. This leads to an apparent acceleration of the
vehicle, which causes an additional growth in position er-
ror. Of course, the advantage of the time differenced carrier
phase processing concerning the inertial navigation perfor-
mance is lost, if the growth in position error is caused mainly
by the vibrations entering the inertial sensor data, so that the
increased velocity and attitude accuracy has no inuence.
Additionally, an increase in velocity accuracy is only possi-
ble if the vibration environment is not too severe, otherwise
carrier phase and delta-range aiding provide a comparable
velocity accuracy. Finally, the trajectory dynamics has an in-
uence on the possible increase in attitude accuracy, too: In
the presence of aggressive maneuvers the attitude errors can
be estimated easily, so that the aiding with delta-ranges is
sufcient to obtain very accurate attitude estimates.
5.2. HIL test results
In order to assess the performance of the proposed car-
rier phase aiding for missile applications, HIL tests with a
benign missile trajectory were performed. For the missile
INS, a tactical grade IMU with 5

/h-1sigma gyroscope bi-

ases was simulated. In the beginning, a one-shot alignment
634 J. Wendel, G.F. Trommer / Aerospace Science and Technology 8 (2004) 627634
Fig. 9. Overall velocity errors of tightly coupled systems processing
delta-range or time differenced carrier phase measurements obtained in a
HIL test, missile-typical scenario.
Fig. 10. Overall velocity errors of tightly coupled systems processing
delta-range or time differenced carrier phase measurements obtained in a
HIL test, missile-typical scenario.
of the missile navigation system was assumed. The vibra-
tion induced inertial sensor noise was generated according to
noise process models that were identied from the analysis
of missile ight test data during free ight. Details con-
cerning the vibration induced noise can be found in [10].
Fig 9 shows that in this scenario, the processing of time dif-
ferenced carrier phase measurements offers an increase in
velocity accuracy compared to a delta-range aiding. Com-
pared to the HIL test result shown in Fig. 3 were only sensor
inherent noise according to a tactical grade IMU was as-
sumed, the gain in performance is smaller. Nevertheless, the
increased velocity accuracy leads to an increased attitude ac-
curacy, shown in Fig. 10. Again, compared to Fig. 4 the gain
in performance is reduced because of the vibrations.
6. Conclusion
In this contribution, the advantage of tightly coupled sys-
tems processing GPS pseudorange and delta-range measure-
ments compared to loosely coupled systems processing GPS
position and velocity information was illustrated: In situa-
tions with limited GPS availability, e.g. in missile applica-
tions due to jamming, the measurements to the remaining
satellites allow to prevent or slow down the increase in posi-
tion error a stand-alone INS shows.
Additionally, the velocity and attitude accuracy of a
tightly coupled system was increased by processing time dif-
ferenced carrier phase measurements instead of delta-range
measurements, which has been shown in HIL tests and in
a test drive. This is of great importance in the beginning of
a time interval with purely inertial navigation. The time in-
tegral contained in the measurement equation relating the
time differenced carrier phase measurements to the naviga-
tion lter state vector could be rewritten in the form of a
usual Kalman lter measurement equation, and therefore al-
lowing to process this type of measurement in the navigation
Kalman lter directly. Additionally, due to the time differ-
encing, a DGPS base station is not required. Therefore, any
tightly coupled system that uses a GPS receiver providing
carrier phase measurements can be upgraded with the pro-
posed method by a pure software change.
Finally, advantages of the proposed method were found
for a missile-typical scenario, where signicant vibrations
corrupt the inertial sensor data. As the increase in perfor-
mance is depending on the strength of these vibrations, the
gain in performance is dependent on the application.
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