Since the inception of GPS, satellite navigation has been a widely used means of navigation for both military and civilian users on the ground... Show moreSince the inception of GPS, satellite navigation has been a widely used means of navigation for both military and civilian users on the ground and in the air. GPS is capable of providing highly accurate positioning and timing information to users around the globe. However, for certain applications, providing high-accuracy position estimates is not sufficient. Because satellites are susceptible to faults, the safety, or integrity, of the position estimates is also of concern, especially in civilian aviation where safety is critical. As such, receiver autonomous integrity monitoring (RAIM) can be used in order to detect and potentially exclude these faults and guarantee the safety of the position estimate. RAIM has been capable of supporting horizontal aircraft navigation using GPS for decades and has proven to be a useful tool. Now, as more global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) become available, the potential for advanced RAIM (ARAIM) to support vertical guidance for aircraft using multiple constellations has become an area of great interest. In this work, the ARAIM methodology is discussed, and the procedure is outlined, including protection level calculation, fault detection, and exclusion. The procedure is then implemented in a real-time ARAIM prototype. While GPS and Galileo aim to provide worldwide coverage for vertical guidance by 2020 when Galileo is fully operational, ARAIM performance can be examined at present using the current full-strength GPS and GLONASS constellations. This prototype performs position estimation and ARAIM using measurements from the current GPS, GLONASS, and partial Galileo constellations. ARAIM results in a variety of different GNSS scenarios are examined. Furthermore, this work investigates two methods of improving the computational efficiency of the ARAIM algorithm: satellite selection and fault mode grouping. M.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, May 2017 Show less
