Aiding Navigation for Groups of Aircraft with Bearing and Distance Measurements

Abstract: This thesis extends previous work on navigational aidingof groups of aircraft, primarily intended for the fighter SAAB JAS 39 Gripen,as long as an aircraft gets GPS signals, it is easy to estimate position, but theGPS is relatively easy to jam, rendering alternative methods of positioning necessary.To use internal sensors measuring accelerations and angular velocities is agood replacement on short terms, but gives a drift in positioning over longer timeperiods. To resolve these issues, we review different possibilities to improve navigation performance bycombining measurement data from different aircraft using a consensus filter.We show that the performance canbe improved by using measurements of distance and angles to other aircraft withinthe group in a distributed filter.The filter is implemented in Matlab and evaluated in different scenarios, and this Extended Kalman-Consensus Filter (EKCF) is compared to a previously proposed solution using an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF).