Attitude Estimation of A Rocking Ship with The Angle of Arrival Measurements Using Beacons

Abstract

Abstract: To improve the accuracy of navigation solutions such as position, velocity and attitude, various navigation techniques have been developed. For example, the global positioning system (GPS) and inertial navigation system (INS) have been used in general navigation systems. Nowadays, to provide more accurate navigation solution, extended Kalman filter (EKF) based GPS/INS coupled systems, which calibrate the navigation solution of INS by using the GPS, are also widely used for military systems. However, with the ordinary GPS/INS coupled systems the attitude cannot be calibrated, since the GPS is able to calibrate position and velocity only, and this feature can be vulnerable to certain applications where attitude information is needed. To overcome this drawback, an angle-based attitude estimation technique using beacons is proposed in this paper. The proposed technique uses the angle of arrival (AOA) measurements of the received signals using an array antenna, and estimates the own-ship attitude. The proposed technique is also coupled with INS and the performance of the proposed technique is demonstrated through simulation.