Research on the Barometric Altimeter / Vector-Tracking Based on GPS Receiver Integrated Navigation System

Abstract

For the environment of urban canyon, the number of the available satellites can be as less than 4. Under this environment, the scalar-based GPS receiver is unable to provide navigation solutions. For a vector tracking loop based GPS receiver (VTL-R), a Kalman filter is introduced to complete the signal tracking and navigation computation together. When the available satellites are less than 4, the vector tracking loop based receiver can still work. However, the accuracy of navigation solution degrades over the time. In this paper, a barometric altimeter is introduced to provide the height information for the vector tracking loop. The new measurement model of the barometric altimeter aided vector tracking loop is presented. The method is implemented and evaluated based on a software defined GPS receiver. The results demonstrate the barometric altimeter can obviously slow down the divergence of the navigation filter of the vector tracking loop based receiver when the available satellites are less than 4.