National Aerospace Laboratory Control Systems Division
National Aerospace Laboratory Planning Office
National Aerospace Laboratory Control Systems Division
National Aerospace Laboratory Flight Research Division
National Aerospace Laboratory Flight Research Division
Precise positioning using GPS carrier phase measurement has been widely used in static applications, i.e., geodetic surveying. However, it can also be applied to the precise positioning of a moving platform if an ambiguity contained in the GPS carrier phase measurement is resolved during the motion. The technique to resolve the ambiguity on the way/fly, which is called the OTF (On-The-Fly), has been investigated by many authors. In this paper, a new OTF algorithm is proposed and its feasibility for several kinds of applications is demonstrated. The differential GPS positioning using carrier phase measurements is called Kinematic GPS (KINGS). The Kinematic GPS Software, KINGS, in which the OTF is the most significant algorithm, was developed and its performance was evaluated by conducting a lot of flight experiments using a research aircraft of the National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL). As a result, the correct ambiguity was resolved nearly instantaneously with more than 98 percent probability when the distance between the aircraft receiver and the ground reference receiver was less than 20 km, and five or more satellites were observed. Once the ambiguity was resolved, the aircraft position was determined within 10 cm (3 sigma).