Date of Award

9-15-2016

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

John F. Raquet, PhD.

Abstract

Achieving worldwide alternatives to GPS is a challenging engineering problem. Current GPS alternatives often suffer from limitations such as where and when the systems can operate. Navigation using the Earth's magnetic anomaly field, which is globally available at all times, shows promise to overcome many of these limitations. We present a navigation filter which uses the Earth's magnetic anomaly field as a navigation signal to aid an inertial navigation system (INS) in an aircraft. The filter utilizes highly-accurate optically pumped cesium (OPC) magnetometers to make scalar measurements of the Earth's magnetic field and compare them to a map using a marginalized particle filter approach. We demonstrate navigation accuracy of 13 meters DRMS with a high quality magnetic anomaly map at low altitudes with real flight data. We conduct a simulation over the continental United States to predict accuracies with respect to variables like location and altitude. Finally, we address the problem of map availability by presenting a method for a self-building magnetic anomaly model.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-ENG-DS-16-S-074

DTIC Accession Number

AD1017870

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