Kalman Filter-Based RAIM for Reliable Aircraft Positioning with GPS and NavIC Constellations

This paper presents a novel Kalman filter (KF)-based receiver autonomous integrity monitoring (RAIM) algorithm for reliable aircraft positioning with global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). The presented method overcomes major limitations of the authors’ previous work, and uses two GNSS, namely, Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) of India and the Global Positioning System (GPS). The algorithm is developed in the range domain and compared with two existing approaches—one each for the weighted least squares navigation filter and KF. Extensive simulations were carried out for an unmanned aircraft flight path over the Indian sub-continent for validation of the new approach. Although both existing methods outperform the new one, the work is significant for the following reasons. KF is an integral part of advanced navigation systems that can address frequent loss of GNSS signals (e.g., vector tracking and multi-sensor integration). Developing KF RAIM algorithms is essential to ensuring their reliability. KF solution separation (or position domain) RAIM offers good performance at the cost of high computational load. Presented range domain KF RAIM, on the other hand, offers satisfactory performance to a certain extent, eliminating a major issue of growing position error bounds over time. It requires moderate computational resources, and hence, shows promise for real-time implementations in avionics. Simulation results also indicate that addition of NavIC alongside GPS can substantially improve RAIM performance, particularly in poor geometries.