Publisher's Synopsis
This is a short course covering basic and advanced topics inertial navigation and missile guidance. This course is structured to present the fundamental concepts without the in-depth theoretical background and many of the mathematical derivations that commonly accompany an academic presentation of the subject. My intention was to introduce navigation and guidance in a simplified manner to those with no previous background in the field, or to provide a review to those who have studied the subjects previously. Readers should have a familiarity with differential and integral calculus and differential equations to help understand some equations presented. The form of this short course is like the many short courses I've taught at government agencies and private corporations during my thirty-five-year career as a professor of aerospace engineering at Auburn University. It presents the material in a simple outline/bullet format using many understandable figures, rather than using lengthy, detailed explanations with complex mathematical derivations and proofs. It provides the practical equations that are useful to the practicing engineer. The objectives of this short course are to:
- Review the navigation, guidance, and control process and the
role of inertial navigation.
- Discuss the concept and functionality of inertial sensors and their
role in inertial navigation.
- Present the coordinate systems and coordinate transformation
methods used in inertial navigation.
- Explain Newton's Second Law and its application to inertial
navigation.
- Review how the mechanization equations are developed and
used in inertial navigation, including gravitational modeling.
- Present the sources of navigation errors and how they are
mathematically modeled.
- Introduce the concepts of GPS-aided inertial navigation systems,
along with possible filtering and coupling approaches.
- Examine missile modeling techniques and equations of motion
used in missile guidance.
- Review the fundamentals of missile guidance methods and
guidance system models.
- Provide an overview and performance comparison of classical
guidance laws.
- Describe the concept of Linear Quadratic Guidance theory and
its use in the development of advanced guidance laws.
- Introduce how inertial measurement units can be modeled
mathematically.
The material presented is usually covered in graduate level course except that there's no required homework, quizzes, projects, computer programs to write, or examinations. I believe that even a novice reading through this material will gain an in-depth understanding of the subjects covered. The material presented is not easy, but it can be enjoyably simple once the fundamentals are understood. To that end, I've attempted to present the difficult concepts as clearly as possible to facilitate that understanding. This short course is part of a series I've developed as a Professor at Auburn University. Others in this series include:
Orbital Mechanics, Part I: The Two-Body Problem
Orbital Mechanics, Part II: Satellite Perturbations
State Estimation and Kalman Filtering: Fundamentals of Orbit Determination
David A. Cicci
Auburn, Alabama
ciccida@auburn.edu
