Communication Link Enhanced GPS/MEMS IMU Navigation System

The objective of this SBIR Phase I project is to investigate and demonstrate the feasibility of a Communication Link Enhanced GPS/MEMS IMU Navigation System for low cost and precision guidance for military and commercial platforms, which are currentlyenvisioned as solely relying on GPS for geopositioning. Since GPS signals are transmitted by GPS satellites operating at well-known frequencies with well-defined modulation characteristics and low signal-to-noise ratios, the possibility of enemy ElectronicCounter Measures (ECM) attempting to deny reception of GPS satellite signals could be a potential problem for precision guidance. Low cost, miniaturized, reliable MEMS (MicroElectronicMechanicalSystem) inertial sensors and reduced size, weight, and costcommunication link (such as Link-16) terminals offer an attractive opportunity to complement those GPS-reliant capabilities to provide full-range navigation information for precision guidance. In this Phase I, an innovative architecture, algorithms, andsoftware to integrate the information from a communication link terminal, GPS chipset, and a MEMS IMU, are developed, analyzed, simulated, and evaluated to demonstrate and quantify the benefit of the proposed approach and algorithms.