Stellar Refraction–Based SINS/CNS Integrated Navigation System for Aerospace Vehicles
Publication: Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 29, Issue 2
Abstract
Stellar refraction-based celestial navigation is an attractive method with high accuracy and low cost. Most existing research works only focus on orbit determination problems for orbital vehicles in outer space while its working domain is limited. In order to expand its applicable area and improve information utilization, a new fault-tolerant stellar refraction-based inertial/celestial integrated navigation system is designed in this work, which is supposed to provide accurate position, velocity, and attitude information for aerospace vehicles that either make a maneuvering flight in near space or move in a predetermined Earth orbit in outer space. First, a new nonlinear navigation system dynamic model is established by error-prorogation equations of the strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) in the Earth-centered inertial (ECI) frame, in which additive quaternion with less model error is used for attitude computation. Secondly, celestial navigation subsystem (CNS) is used to indirectly sense the horizon by utilizing the starlight atmospheric refraction model and determine the vehicle attitude by means of a multistar vector observation method. Thirdly, a fault-tolerant federated unscented Kalman filtering (FFUKF) algorithm is employed to perform information fusion, aiming at improving the navigation accuracy and reliability. Numerical simulations are conducted for an aerospace vehicle either in a near space maneuvering flight or in an orbital flight along a low Earth orbit. The results show that the proposed strategy achieves higher accuracy than traditional methods, and all the navigation parameters can be estimated. Moreover, different measurement faults are introduced in the simulations, and the FFUKF algorithm manages to detect and isolate them and keep the navigation system working in normal operation.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Britting, K. (2010). “Inertial navigation systems analysis.” Artech House, Norwood, MA.
Carlson, N. A. (1990). “Federated square root filter for decentralized parallel processors.” IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., 26(3), 517–525.
Groves, P. (2008). “Principles of GNSS, inertial, and multi-sensor integrated navigation systems.” Artech House, Norwood, MA.
Han, P., Mu, R., and Cui, N. (2011). “Fault-tolerant integrated navigation for reusable boost vehicle based on strong tracking UKF.” Proc., 17th AIAA Int. Space Planes and Hypersonic Systems and Technologies Conf., American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, San Francisco.
Julier, S. J., and Uhlmann, J. K. (2004). “Unscented filtering and nonlinear estimation.” Proc. IEEE, 92(3), 401–422.
Lair, J., Duchon, P., Riant, P., and Muller, G. (1988). “Satellite navigation by stellar refraction.” Acta Astronautica, 17(10), 1069–1079.
Lehmann, E. L., and Romano, J. P. (2006). Testing statistical hypotheses, Springer, New York.
Luan, X., Shi, Y., and Liu, F. (2012). “Unscented kalman filtering for greenhouse climate control systems with missing measurement.” Int. J. Innovative Comput. Inf. Control, 8(3B), 2173–2180.
Ning, X., Wang, L., Bai, X., and Fang, J. (2013). “Autonomous satellite navigation using starlight refraction angle measurements.” Adv. Space Res., 51(9), 1761–1772.
Nobahari, H., Asl, H. G., and Abtahi, S. F. (2014). “A back-propagation approach to compensate velocity and position errors in an integrated inertial/celestial navigation system using unscented kalman filter.” Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng. Part G J. Aerosp. Eng., 228(10), 1702–1712.
Qian, H., Sun, L., Cai, J., and Huang, W. (2014). “A starlight refraction scheme with single star sensor used in autonomous satellite navigation system.” Acta Astronautica, 96, 45–52.
Qian, H., Sun, L., Cai, J., and Peng, Y. (2013). “A novel navigation method used in a ballistic missile.” Meas. Sci. Technol., 24(10), 105011.
Riaz, S. (2011). “Mathematical modeling of INS/GPS based navigation system using discrete time extended kalman filter schemes for flapping micro air vehicle.” Int. J. Micro Air Veh., 3(1), 25–33.
Schuerman, D. W., Giovane, F., and Greenberg, J. M. (1975). “Stellar refraction: A tool to monitor the height of the tropopause from space.” J. Appl. Meteorol., 14(6), 1182–1186.
Shuster, M. D., and Oh, S. (1981). “Three-axis attitude determination from vector observations.” J. Guidance Control Dyn., 4(1), 70–77.
Wang, A. (2008). “Modern celestial navigation and the key techniques.” Acta Electronica Sinica, 35(12), 2347–2353.
Wang, X., Zhang, Q., and Li, H. (2014). “An autonomous navigation scheme based on starlight, geomagnetic and gyros with information fusion for small satellites.” Acta Astronautica, 94(2), 708–717.
White, R. L., and Gounley, R. B. (1987). “Satellite autonomous navigation with SHAD (stellar horizon atmospheric dispersion).”, Charles Stark Draper Lab, Cambridge, MA.
White, R. L., Thurman, S. W., and Barnes, F. A. (1985). “Autonomous satellite navigation using observations of starlight atmospheric refraction.” Navigation, 32(4), 317–333.
Wu, X., and Wang, X. (2011). “A SINS/CNS deep integrated navigation method based on mathematical horizon reference.” Aircr. Eng. Aerosp. Technol., 83(1), 26–34.
Xia, C. (2003). “Investigation on celestial/lnertial integrated navigation patterns.” Opt. OptoElectron. Technol., 3, 5.
Xiong, Z., Liu, J., Yu, F., and Chen, H. (2010). “Research of airborne INS/CNS integrated filtering algorithm based on celestial angle observation.” J. Astronaut., 2(31), 397–403.
Yang, B., Si, F., Xu, F., and Zhou, W. (2014). “Adaptive measurement model of navigation by stellar refraction based on multiple models switching.” J. Navig., 67(4), 673–685.
Yang, H., Xia, Y., Shi, P., and Fu, M. (2011). “A novel delta operator kalman filter design and convergence analysis.” IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. I Regul. Pap., 58(10), 2458–2468.
Yang, P., Zhang, Y., and Li, B. (2007). “Fusion technology for autonomous navigation of constellation based on star sensor.” Syst. Eng. Electron., 29(12), 2131–2141.
Yu, M. J., Lee, J. G., and Park, H. W. (1999). “Comparison of SDINS in-flight alignment using equivalent error models.” IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., 35(3), 1046–1054.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 29 • Issue 2 • March 2016
Copyright
© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 11, 2014
Accepted: Jun 15, 2015
Published online: Sep 9, 2015
Discussion open until: Feb 9, 2016
Published in print: Mar 1, 2016
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.