Luis Lanca

Initial Realization of a Sensor Fusion Based Onboard Maritime Integrated PNT Unit

This paper introduces the basic concept of the Position Navigation and Timing (PNT) Module as future part of a ship side Integrated Navigation System (INS). Core of the PNT Module is a sensor fusion based processing system (PNT Unit). The paper will focus on important aspects and first results of the initial practical realization of such a PNT Unit, including a realization of a Consistent Common Reference System (CCRS), GNSS/IMU tightly coupled positioning results as well as contingency performance of the inertial sensors.

A method for IMU/GNSS/Doppler Velocity Log integration in marine applications

Although the GNSS/GPS had become the primary source for Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) information in maritime applications, the ultimate performance of the system can strongly degrade due to space weather events, deliberate interference, shadowing, multipath and overall system failures. Within the presented work the development of an affordable integrated PNT unit for future on-board integrated systems is presented, where the GNSS information is fused both with inertial and Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) measurements. Here redundant and complementary information from different sensors serves to improve the system performance and reduce the position drift when the GNSS signals are not available. The nonlinearity of this advanced fusion problem is addressed by employing Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) with spherical point arrangement and further detailed analysis is presented in terms of the process and measurement models implemented. The results demonstrate that position drift can be significantly reduced by incorporating DVL measurements in IMU/GNSS system and that the proposed integrated navigation algorithm is feasible and efficient for GNSS outages of prolonged duration, where pure inertial GNSS outage bridging would be either inaccurate or would require too expensive IMUs.