Tactical strategies for improving accuracy in optical targeting systems

This thesis proposes and studies a tightly coupled Inertial Navigation System (INS)/Global Positioning System (GPS)/Electro Optical imaging system (EO) in which aircraft states, sensor biases, and ground target coordinates are simultaneously estimated using a single Kalman filter. The performance of the tightly coupled INS/GPS/EO system is analyzed by comparing navigation and targeting accuracy for various levels of INS and CPS subsystem accuracy.; The first benefits come from tightly coupling INS/GPS navigation and EO targeting to track an unknown stationary target, resulting in improved navigation and targeting accuracy when compared to the commonly used separate INS/GPS navigation and EO targeting systems.; Secondly, we investigate tactical strategies to use several navigation aids for orientation calibration in the INS/GPS/EO targeting system, resulting in further improvements in targeting accuracy when compared to without using tactical strategies. Tactical strategies include tracking control points, choosing favorable aircraft-target geometries, sun tracking, and executing aircraft S-turn maneuvers.