Design of a Kalman Filter for Transfer Alignment

Abstract : The Norwegian Defense Research Establishment (NDRE) has been involved in the development of several inertially based integrated navigation systems. In all of these systems, the Kalman filter has been the sensor integrator. During the last years one of the main efforts has been on the development of the navigation system for the air launched Penguin Mk3 missile. Low cost inertial navigation systems (INS) are extensively applied in missile midcourse guidance. The launch platform is generally equipped with a high quality INS< and there is a need for some means to transfer this performance to the missile INS. This is done by transfer alignment (TA) before launch. This paper describes the design philosophy used in the development of the alignment subsystem of the inertial midcourse navigation system for the air launched Penguin antiship missile adopted for the F-16 fighter aircraft. The desired performance was achieved through a three level Kalman filter (KF) design process. On the first level we assume that our system is linear and then we design the KF. On the second level we deal with the design of the preprocessor which make the linear assumptions on level one valid. The last level deals with the field testing of the missile navigation system which is the final test of the validity of the design procedure.