Analytical Aircraft State and IMU Signal Generator From Smoothed Reference Trajectory

Abstract

Generating aircraft position, velocity, and attitude along a reference trajectory is useful in many path and mission planning applications. In applications simulating an inertial navigation system the body-frame accelerations and angular rates are also required. This work presents a method for generating a smoothed continuous-curvature reference trajectory from a series of waypoints using line, arc, clothoid, and Fermat spiral segments in a fillet smoothing framework. The geometry of the segments are used to generate the position, velocity, and attitude of an aircraft following the reference trajectory. A primary contribution of this article is the use of the path geometry, coordinated turn model, and curvilinear motion theory to obtain analytical solutions for the body-frame accelerations and angular rates of the aircraft along the reference trajectory.