Absolute navigation of high-altitude and high-speed vehicles using relative position vector measurements
Beijing Institute of Technology Press Co., LtdPeer-Reviewed Publication
With the increasing demand for high-altitude high-speed vehicles in complex adversarial environments, autonomous navigation under conditions of GNSS signal unavailability or damaged ground infrastructure has become a critical technological bottleneck. Existing navigation means—including visual navigation, terrain matching, inertial navigation, celestial navigation, and geomagnetic navigation—each have inherent limitations, making it difficult to simultaneously satisfy requirements for all-weather operation, high accuracy, and long endurance. Inspired by the use of relative position vectors for absolute navigation in spacecraft formation flying, this paper extends this principle to high-altitude high-speed vehicles that are significantly influenced by non-conservative forces such as engine thrust and aerodynamic forces. However, it is necessary to utilize accelerometer measurements from inertial navigation to subtract the effects of non-conservative accelerations, so that the gravitational acceleration information—which reflects the absolute position—can be extracted from the relative position vectors. Nevertheless, the influence of multi-source uncertainties—including accelerometer noise and bias, relative position measurement errors, and star tracker attitude errors—on navigation accuracy remains unclear, and how to achieve high-precision autonomous navigation under this framework remains a key issue to be resolved.
- Journal
- Space: Science & Technology