Design of Rao–Blackwellized Point-Mass Filter With Application in Terrain Aided Navigation

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the terrain aided navigation (TAN) systems based on the state estimation algorithms. In particular, the emphasis is laid on the design of the Bayesian Rao–Blackwellized point-mass filter for nonlinear state-space models of a specific structure typically used in the terrain aided navigation. The proposed filter preserves advantages of the point-mass filter, including the high estimation accuracy, robust initialization, deterministic nature of the algorithm, and predictable computational complexity, while the computational complexity is significantly reduced. The performance of the Rao–Blackwellized point-mass filter is illustrated using a simulated numerical example and a TAN system based on the real data.