An inertial ("INS")/GPS receiver includes an INS sub-system which
incorporates, into a modified Kalman filter, GPS observables and/or other
observables that span previous and current times. The INS filter utilizes
the observables to update position information relating to both the
current and the previous times, and to propagate the current position,
velocity and attitude related information. The GPS observable may be
delta phase measurements, and the other observables may be, for example,
wheel pick-offs (or counts of wheel revolutions) that are used to
calculate along track differences, and so forth. The inclusion of the
measurements in the filter together with the current and the previous
position related information essentially eliminates the effect of system
dynamics from the system model. A position difference can thus be formed
that is directly observable by the phase difference or along track
difference measured between the previous and current time epochs.
Further, the delta phase measurements can be incorporated in the INS
filter without having to maintain GPS carrier ambiguity states. The INS
sub-system and the GPS sub-system share GPS and INS position and
covariance information. The receiver time tags the INS and any other
non-GPS measurement data with GPS time, and then uses the INS and GPS
filters to produce INS and GPS position information that is synchronized
in time. The GPS/INS receiver utilizes GPS position and associated
covariance information and the GPS and/or other observables in the
updating of the INS filter. The INS filter, in turn, provides updated
system error information that is used to propagate inertial current
position, velocity and attitude information. Further, the receiver
utilizes the inertial position, velocity and covariance information in
the GPS filters to speed up GPS satellite signal re-acquisition and
associated ambiguity resolution operations