Development of an attitude heading reference system for an airship
Date
2006-12
Authors
Bijker, Johan
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch
Abstract
A real time attitude and heading reference system (AHRS) was successfully implemented for use on
an airship. The AHRS was tested on board a small airship (blimp) with real data supplied from the
inertial measurement unit and GPS receiver.
The inertial measurement unit was built with lower grade sensors, resulting in significant reductions
in component cost. To ensure accurate navigation results, the high rate inertial measurements were
complemented with low rate GPS velocity and position updates in an extended Kalman filter
configuration.
A study was made of various Kalman filter configurations, especially the possibility of splitting a
big Kalman filter into smaller Kalman filters. It was found that the best trade-off between accuracy
and processing power was achieved by having two smaller Kalman filters running in sequence. The
first extended Kalman filter estimates the attitude of the airship, while the second extended Kalman
filter estimates the velocity and position of the airship.
The two smaller Kalman filters were implemented on an onboard computer to provide real time
estimates of the attitude, velocity and position of the airship.
Description
Thesis (MScEng (Electrical and Electronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006.
Keywords
Theses -- Electronic engineering, Dissertations -- Electronic engineering