GPS Imbedded Telemetry

Abstract

The Global Positioning System has achieved a maturity whereby a large marketplace of users have developed. This marketplace has been flooded with many types of receivers from a large number of manufacturers. The broad acceptance of the system among military as well as commercial users has created this market, and receiver availability due to planned mass production has precipitated substantial price reduction for GPS receivers. OEM receivers are presently available on the market at such a low cost that their incorporation into flight test systems should be seriously considered. The data produced by the system has a reasonable and usable accuracy for platform position, flight vectors and time. These are suitable in most range applications and can either augment or replace present tracking methods such as multilateration or triangulation for vehicle position. The advantages of eliminating the need for tracking functions in ground control stations are obvious especially in multi-vehicle operations such as in air-to-air weaponry testing and range training missions. The simplification of operation in position determination becomes especially desirable for over-the-horizon platforms. In this case, ground or airborne relays must be employed which complicates the location task by orders of magnitude.