New approach for swarming aircraft positioning via network information

The swarming aircraft organized by network will become a basic operation mode for the air force under network centric warfare (NCW) environment. A new approach for swarming aircraft positioning based on mutual distance measurement data is proposed. Simulation results show that the position accuracy for an individual inertial navigation system (INS) in a swarming aircraft group can be improved up to 5 m in 1.5 minutes time period if distance measurement error is 20 m (1σ). In the meantime the time synchronization between network nodes can be improved up to 1ms. If 15 minutes time period is permitted, the parameters of INS error model can also be estimated. After correction the INS position accuracy can be improved up to 30 m circular error probability in the subsequent half an hour, position accuracy can be increased by about 10 times. The periodic positioning via network can not only obviously increases the positioning accuracy for the swarming aircraft but also detects the soft failure of the particular system and isolates it by system reconfiguration.