Real-Time Relative Navigation with Integer Ambiguity

Relative navigation system is presented using measurements from a single-channel global positioning system (GPS) simulator. The objective of this study is to provide real-time relative navigation results as well as absolute navigation results for two formation flying satellites separated about 1km in low earth orbit. To improve the performance, more accurate dynamic model and modified relative measurement model are developed. This modified method prevents non-linearity of the measurement model from degrading precision by applying linearization about the states from absolute navigation algorithm not about a priori states. Furthermore, absolute states are obtained using ion-free GRAPHIC pseudo-ranges and precise relative states are provided using double differential carrier-phase data based on Extended Kalman Filter. The software-based simulation is performed and achieved meter-level precision for absolute navigation and millimeter-level precision for relative navigation. The absolute and relative accuracies at steady state are about 0.77m and 4mm respectively (3D, r.m.s.). In addition, Integer ambiguity algorithm (LAMBDA method) improves simulation performances.