North alignment of multi-rotating systems using a known fixed point

Abstract

This article deals with multi-rotating systems cooperation and their measurements exchange. We investigate the geographic north alignment in rotating systems such as antenna pedestals, positioners, etcEach system contains some angular position sensors that make measurements based on their local zero angles. These measurements cannot be used by other systems. Therefore, the alignment of these rotating systems with respect to the common angle is necessary, such that all measurements are made based on this common angle. In this paper, we introduce a method for the north alignment considering a known fixed point. For this purpose, we propose an efficient approach for finding the angle between the north direction and the zero angle of these systems. Both the spherical and ellipsoidal Earth models are considered. The results accuracy is also analyzed and the effect of each rotation axis not being perpendicular to the Earth surface is investigated. The proposed approach is shown to be extremely accurate while being simple. Finally, the significance of the proposed approach is validated through several experiments.