Comparison of attitude determination approaches using multiple Global Positioning System (GPS) antennas

Abstract

GPS-based attitude system is an important research field, since it is a valuable technique for the attitude determination of platforms. There exist two classes approaches for attitude determination using the GPS. The one determines attitude via baseline estimates in two frames, the other one solves for attitude by incorporating the attitude parameters directly into the GPS measurements. However, comparisons between these two classes approaches have been unexplored. First of all, two algorithms are introduced in detail which on behalf of these two kinds of approaches. Then we present numerical simulations demonstrating the performance of our algorithms and provide a comparison evaluating.

Keywords

• GPS
• attitude determination
• baseline
• attitude matrix
• constrained LAMBDA
• multivariate constrained LAMBDA