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A Novel Design for the Ultra-Tightly Coupled GPS/INS Navigation System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 May 2012

Dah-Jing Jwo*
Affiliation:
(Department of Communications, Navigation and Control Engineering, National Taiwan Ocean University, Taiwan)
Chi-Fan Yang
Affiliation:
(Department of Communications, Navigation and Control Engineering, National Taiwan Ocean University, Taiwan)
Chih-Hsun Chuang
Affiliation:
(Department of Communications, Navigation and Control Engineering, National Taiwan Ocean University, Taiwan)
Kun-Chieh Lin
Affiliation:
(Department of Communications, Navigation and Control Engineering, National Taiwan Ocean University, Taiwan)
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Abstract

This paper presents a sensor fusion method for the Ultra-Tightly Coupled (UTC) Global Positioning System (GPS)/Inertial Navigation System (INS) integrated navigation. The UTC structure, also known as the deep integration, exhibits many advantages, e.g., disturbance and multipath rejection capability, improved tracking capability for dynamic scenarios and weak signals, and reduction of acquisition time. This architecture involves the integration of I (in-phase) and Q (quadrature) components from the correlator of a GPS receiver with the INS data. The Particle Filter (PF) exhibits superior performance as compared to an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) in state estimation for the nonlinear, non-Gaussian system. To handle the problem of heavy-tailed probability distribution, one of the strategies is to incorporate the UKF into the PF as the proposal distribution, leading to the Unscented Particle Filter (UPF). The combination of an adaptive UPF and Fuzzy Logic Adaptive System (FLAS) is adopted for reducing the number of particles with sufficiently good results. The GPS tracking loops may lose lock due to the signals being weak, subjected to excessive dynamics or completely blocked. One of the principal advantages of the UTC structure is that a Doppler frequency derived from the INS is integrated with the tracking loops to improve the receiver tracking capability. The Doppler frequency shift is calculated and fed to the GPS tracking loops for elimination of the effect of stochastic errors caused by the Doppler frequency. In this paper, several nonlinear filtering approaches, including EKF, UKF, UPF and ‘FLAS assisted UPF’ (FUPF), are adopted for performance comparison for ultra-tight integration of GPS and INS. It is assumed that no outage occurs such that the inertial sensor errors can be properly corrected and accordingly the aiding information is working well. Two examples are provided for performance assessment for the various data fusion methods. The FUPF algorithm with Doppler velocity aiding demonstrates remarkable improvement, especially in the high dynamic environments, in navigation estimation accuracy with reduction of number of particles.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 2012
Figure 0

Figure 1. Illustration of the I and Q components as the measurements of the ultra-tightly coupled GPS/INS integration with Doppler velocity aiding.

Figure 1

Figure 2. The recursive Bayesian state estimation.

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Figure 3. A fuzzy system.

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Figure 4. Configuration of the ultra-tightly coupled feedback integrated navigation using the FUPF.

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Figure 5. Membership functions of input fuzzy variables μ (top) and ξ (bottom).

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Figure 6. Three-dimensional test trajectory for Scenario 1.

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Table 1. Description of the vehicle motion for Scenario 1.

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Table 2. INS error specification for Scenario 1.

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Figure 7. Position errors using the EKF for the cases with aiding and w/o aiding – Scenario 1.

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Figure 8. Position errors using the UKF for the cases with aiding and w/o aiding – Scenario 1.

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Figure 9. Position errors for FUPF, as compared to the UKF and EKF – Scenario 1 (all with aiding).

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Figure 10. Comparison of position errors for FUPF when 10 and 50 particles are used – Scenario 1 (with aiding).

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Figure 11. Doppler frequency errors (Hz) for the 9 satellites based on the EKF (black), UKF (green) and FUPF (blue) approaches, all with aiding – Scenario 1.

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Figure 12. Comparison of position RMS errors for the five approaches – Scenario 1.

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Table 3. Numerical data for the five approaches – Scenario 1 (RMS errors, in metres).

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Table 4. Comparison of execution time for various approaches – Scenario 1 (all with aiding, in sec).

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Table 5. Comparison of position RMS errors (in metres) for the FUKF with different particle numbers – Scenario 1.

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Figure 13. Three-dimensional test trajectory for Scenario 2.

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Table 6. Description of the vehicle motion for Scenario 2.

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Table 7. INS error specifications for Scenario 2 (from Crista IMU Specifications [2012]).

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Figure 14. Position errors using the EKF for the cases with aiding and w/o aiding – Scenario 2.

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Figure 15. Position errors using the UKF for the cases with aiding and w/o aiding – Scenario 2.

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Figure 16. Position errors for FUPF, as compared to the UKF and EKF – Scenario 2 (all with aiding).

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Figure 17. Comparison of position errors for FUPF when 10 and 50 particles are used – Scenario 2 (with aiding).

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Figure 18. Doppler frequency errors (Hz) for the 9 satellites based on the EKF (black), UKF (green) and FUPF (blue) approaches, all with aiding – Scenario 2.

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Figure 19. Comparison of position RMS errors for the five approaches – Scenario 2.

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Table 8. Numerical data for the five approaches – Scenario 2 (RMS errors, in metres).

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Table 9. Comparison of execution time for various approaches – Scenario 2 (all with aiding, in sec).

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Table 10. Comparison of position RMS errors (in metres) for the FUKF with different particle numbers – Scenario 2.