A Marine Direction Finding System Based on Global Positioning System

Abstract

Direction finding and attitude determination is of utmost importance for marine, aerial, spatial and land-based navigation [1], as well as control of vehicles, in surveying and in target acquisition of tracking radars. These problems can be solved using dedicated sensors commonly named as compasses and rate gyros. Unfortunately, the classical means of attitude determination both by magnetic and gyrocompasses become unusable at extreme latitudes. Furthermore, gyrocompasses inherently yield erroneous results on high speed craft. Three-axis attitude of a vehicle can be determined using a GPS receiver with multiple antennas, by measuring carrier phases [2], signal strength [3], or integrated INS/GPS systems [4]. This paper proposes a new method of attitude determination using two low-cost GPS receivers.