Relative Global Positioning System/ Inertial Navigation System (GPS/INS) Innovations for Autonomous Unmanned Air Systems (UAS)

The Navy Unmanned Combat Air System (N-UCAS) vision is to develop a weapon delivery system that expands tactical mission options and provides revolutionary new air power and penetrating surveillance capability. Key to the N-UCAS mission is the ability to perform precision autonomous navigation, even in GPS-denied environments. Under a current contract with the Navy, NAVSYS is developing a method of improving the existing Relative Navigation (RELNAV) functionality in Link-16 terminals to operate with near-GPS quality by embedding a virtual atomic reference clock that is common across all “Server” terminals. These Server terminals can then provide Precision-RELNAV (P-RELNAV) services to “Client” terminals in jammed environments. Under this SBIR effort, we propose to develop a P-RELNAV application suitable for use with other tactical data links that will be used by N-UCAS. Leveraging our recent work GPS-NAP and RELNAV work, an integrated GPS/TOA/INS Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (GTI-RAIM) algorithm and navigation filter will also be developed that will gracefully integrate RELNAV measurements with existing GPS-INS measurements to provide a robust navigation solution.