Integrated Navigation Systems for Aircraft

Abstract

Work on integrated navigation for aircraft started at RAF Farnborough at least as early as the mid 1950s. At that time the Inertial Navigator (IN) for a guided bomb was being developed and the navigation of the aircraft to the target used a combination of the weapon IN, Doppler radar and position fixing. An output of the navigation process was a calibration of the weapon IN. The operational concept was interesting in that after weapon release the aircraft had to return home using Doppler and compass.Development of this system included flight trials in raf and a & aee aircraft using the Decca Navigator chains in Southern England for position reference. The same method was used in the development of the FSP 100 IN intended for the TSR 2 which took place in 1960/63. On these trials an early airborne digital computer on board the trials aircraft enabled Decca, Doppler and the IN information to be recorded and processed in-flight in a form suitable for post-flight analysis using a ground digital computer. This technique formed the basis for producing the reference navigation system which has been used for all our subsequent trials. The production of a position, velocity and attitude reference system for trials of inertial and other navigation systems has formed a major objective for RAE work on integrated navigation since that time.