SBIR-STTR Award

This effort will develop an advanced low-cost Attitude Heading Reference System (AHRS) to satisfy the requirements for precision pointing of communications antennas. Our approach will use emerging low-cost inertial components together with multiple GPS antennas. GPS interferometry, coupled with accelerometer and rate gyro components, will allow attitude determination under all vehicle motion conditions. Optimizing the GPS carrier and code tracking loops to account for availability of acceleration and attitude measurements will enable robust GPS operation under adverse motion and interference conditions. Limited testing will be conducted using a GPS receiver chipset comprised of two downconverter chips and a single 12-channel correlator.

Benefits:
The advanced AHRS solution has an immediate application within all land transportation markets. In large quantities, near-term target costs below $1000 and long-term target costs below $100 will make this general purpose, easily installed, and unobtrusive device attractive to all fleet transportation services.

Enpoint will continue the development of an advanced low-cost Attitude Heading Reference System (AHRS) that permits precision pointing of communications antennas from mobile platforms. Our approach synergistically merges conventional GPS, GPS interferometry, and Micro Electro-mechanical System (MEMS) inertial components to achieve a high performance, low cost solution. GPS interferometry, coupled with accelerometer and rate gyroscope components, allows attitude determination under all vehicle dynamics. The resulting AHRS will perform better than solutions traditionally used with antenna systems, and will contribute 50 times less to the system cost. Enpoint will mechanize the interferometric processing, MEMS IMU interface, and navigation solution on a next-generation Digital Signal Processor (DSP). We will optimize the GPS carrier-tracking loops and code-tracking loops to account for availability of acceleration and attitude measurements will enable robust GPS operation under adverse motion and interference conditions. In 2 different demonstrations, we will combine the Enpoint low cost AHRS with a communication system to show the potential for achieving high data rate communications from mobile platforms at low cost.

Keywords:
MEMS, MULTIPATH REJECTION, AHRS, GPS, GPS INTERFEROMETRY, ANTENNA POINTING, KALMAN FILTER, INERTIAL NAVIGATION