ACCURACY ANALYSIS OF AIRCRAFT POSITIONING USING GPS DUAL RECEIVERS IN AERIAL NAVIGATION

Abstract

This study presents a modified algorithm to determine the accuracy of GPS positioning in aerial navigation. To achieve this, a mixed model with measurement weights was used to determine the resultant value of accuracy of aerial vehicle positioning. The measurement weights were calculated as a function of the number of GPS tracking satellites. The calculations were performed on actual GPS measurement data recorded by two onboard GNSS receivers installed onboard a Cessna 172 aircraft. The flight test was conducted around the military airport in Dęblin. The conducted analyses demonstrated that the developed algorithm improved the accuracy of GPS positioning from 62 to 91% for horizontal coordinates and between 16-83% for the vertical component of the aerial vehicle position in the BLh ellipsoidal frame. The obtained test results show that the developed method improves the accuracy of aircraft position and could be applied in aerial navigation.