Urban Operations with the Enhanced Personal Inertial Navigation System Prototype

When mission success depends on accurate positioning and navigation, it is not always possible to count on global positioning systems (i.e. GNSS) to be available. Operations in high signal interference environments such as urban, rugged terrain, forest, or indoor areas result in intermittent, weak or no satellite signal reception. In addition, intentional or unintentional jamming and spoofing are real threats to the GPS-dependent user's ability to maintain situational awareness. For use in these environments, Honeywell is developing an enhanced Personal Inertial Navigation System (ePINS) solution specifically designed for the dismounted soldier. The ePINS solution integrates a MEMS Inertial Measurement Unit, a barometric altimeter, a magnetometer, a GPS receiver, and Honeywell's newly developed wavelet-based human motion model into a self-contained, user-friendly package with the objective of creating a device that is rugged, lightweight and can withstand many demanding environments. This paper presents recent urban testing performance results of the current ePINS prototype in various GPS-denied environments around the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area. The average navigation accuracy meets 2% distance travel goal for both open path and closed path trajectories.