MStar Semiconductor (Taiwan) has completed design and engineering of a com-bined GPS/GLONASS receiver for consumer market. The purpose of this paper is to inform the GNSS community about this development; in particular, about spe-cific features and architecture of the receiver. Results of receiver preliminary tests under restricted satellite visibility – first, driving a car in urban environment, and, second, a static test in indoor environment – are also presented.

In practice, the cases are not uncommon when rare jumps (of a step type) can occur in the errors of sensors (accelerometers or gyroscopes). Then, in particular, the system is not subject to calibration and must be brought to a standard condition. So, the presence of jumps is important for making a decision about the admittance of SDINS to the operation. Therefore, the problem of such failures detection is topical. Usually, the navigation algorithms (including calibration algorithms) are based on the Kalman filtering theory. Their distinctive feature is that they resolve quadratic optimization problems and therefore are very convenient from the computational point of view. Because of the jump variations of signals the estimates obtained by standard quadratic methods are not sufficiently accurate. Thus one needs to elaborate the estimation algorithms that are robust with respect to the jumps in the errors of sensors. The paper is devoted to a nonstandard method for processing the output signals of SDINS. We propose to use an 1_l-norm approximation based approach (cf. (16)) that allows us to estimate efficiently the state of dynamic sys-tems even under anomalous variation of the errors (see figures 1-3).

Application of Strapdown Inertial Navigation Systems (SINS) to highly spinning vehicles imposes very stringent and in most cases unrealizable requirements to scale factor errors of angular rate sensors (ARS). Various techniques for accuracy improvement of measurement of angular rate along the rotation axis are analyzed. A solution without additional hardware is proposed. This solution is based upon the forced regular precession of a vehicle. This precession allows estimating the spin rate around the longitudinal axis with the help of outputs of cross angular rate sensors; these angular rate sensors are part of the principal inertial measurement unit. Algorithms implementing the proposed technique are analyzed, and the results of simulation are discussed.

Reviewed are the analysis results of Satellite Navigation Equipment (SNE) data obtained in a flight experiment on the International Space Station (ISS) simultaneously from three Navigation Receivers (NR) at different configurations of major re-reflecting elements of ISS – Solar Arrays (SA) of the US segment of the station. It is shown that re-reflections result in significant errors in pseudorange, phase change, as well as in errors in determining ISS coordinates and velocity. These errors differ significantly for different NRs and heavily depend on the SA configuration. Proposed are methods for significantly reducing the effects of re-reflections on the handling of navigation, attitude control and relative navigation tasks during SC rendezvous. The proposed methods were developed using SNE measurements obtained in a flight experiment. Determined were the actual accuracy characteristics of the navigation tasks, which are proposed for introduction into the satellite navigation equipment being developed for Soyuz and Progress.

The paper presents the results of development of the railway diagnostic inertial sys-tem. The key element of this system is a set of inertial measurement modules, based on micromechanical gyros and accelerometers, which are mounted directly onto the axle boxes (a cover of bearings) of the wheel pairs. Such a system architecture made it possible to carry out the scientific investigations of the action, provided by dynamic interaction between the train and the rail track onto the results of geometry de-formation measurement, as well as to provide measurement of the parameters like de-fects of the rail rolling surface.

In many indoor security and rescue missions, it is essential for the deployed personnel to have accurate positioning information available. If the scene is not explored yet, a map has to be created during the mission and exchanged between different teams, so that subsequent intruders benefit from the knowledge about previously visited locations. In this paper, the multi-sensor navigation system called IndoorGuide is presented which accomplishes this task. It comprises two lightweight micro-electro-mechanical inertial measurement units for tracking the motion of the user. A monocular camera is integrated in the navigation system which provides attitude and position aiding. The attitude information is extracted by tracking vanishing points in the images of the camera. Position aiding is realized by mapping and recognizing visited locations. For the data fusion, a Kalman Filter and a robust optimization technique based on graphs are compared. Results from experimental test runs are presented and discussed.

We propose a method to compensate the errors in pseudo range and Doppler shift measurements resulting from multipath propagation of GNSS signals. The method is based on improving the receiver frequency resolution, which reduces the multi-path effect or even separates a Line of Sight (LOS) signal from a reflected one. Multipath mitigation significantly enhances the positioning accuracy. The method was implemented in a GNSS receiver and tested with GNSS simulator and in real urban canyons

A small-sized trinary laser gyroscope (TLG) М-40 has been developed by RIEP Plc to be applied in navigating systems and positioning systems of midrange accuracy class imposing higher standards to weight-and-dimensional characteristics, device stability to external mechanical impacts and functional readiness time. TLG М-40 is a self-contained orientation parameters meter with data release in digital form.

A basic problems limiting FOG accuracy are considered and a principal ways of their elimination are presented. A most probable mechanism of initial zero bias drift due to device warm up and under external destabilizing factors is described. Also presented a single mode fibers constructions for fiber ring interferometer components, a new single mode sensing coil fibers for their radiation resistance problem solution and a construction of sensing coil itself for its temperature sensitivity suppression is also presented. Finally, a new way is described of electronic signal processing solving the dead zone problem.

The approach for building the complex performance criteria of RR-type MMG de-signs that takes into account simultaneously such factors as scale factor and over-load capacity has been proposed. The common complex criteria built on the base of quality metering principle allow to estimate impartially the combination of attributes characterized by heterogeneous and mutually antithetic functions. These complex criteria allow to carrying out the comparison of different variants and the parametric optimization.