Feasibility Analysis of Stellar Refraction Indirect Horizon Sensing Positioning on the Carrier inside the Atmosphere

Abstract

The stellar refraction indirect horizon sensing positioning method has the characteristics of strong auto-nomy, high accuracy and low cost, which is a new celestial navigation method with great application prospect. At pre-sent, the traditional stellar refraction indirect horizon sensing positioning method is a celestial positioning method based on the carrier outside the atmosphere. However, most of carriers mainly work in the atmosphere. In order to analyze the feasibility of this stellar refraction positioning method on the carrier inside the atmosphere, the starlight atmospheric refraction model is established based on the refraction law and spherical atmospheric model, and the working mechanism of stellar refraction indirect horizon sensing positioning is analyzed according to the relationship between the stellar refraction angle and the carrier position. Then, the feasibility of the application of the stellar refraction indirect horizon sensing positioning method inside the atmosphere is demonstrated and analyzed by quantitatively analyzing the refraction angle deviation of the carrier inside and outside the atmosphere. The results show that the conventional stellar refraction positioning method is only applicable to the carrier flying above 40 km. If the rough height of the carrier can be obtained by altimeter, the stellar refraction indirect horizon sensing positioning method can be applied to the carrier with a flying altitude of 20~40 km inside the atmosphere.

Keywords

• |celestial navigation|steller refraction navigation|indirect horizon sensing positioning|stellar atmosphere refraction|refraction angle|mathematical model