Model aided airborne integrated navigation system based on an improved square-root unscented H∞ filter

An inertial navigation system (INS) aided with an aircraft dynamic model (ADM) is developed as a novel airborne integrated navigation system, coping with the absence of a global navigation satellite system. To overcome the shortcomings of the conventional linear integration of INS/ADM based on an extended Kalman filter, a nonlinear integration method is proposed. Fast-update ADM makes it possible to utilize a direct filtering method, which employs nonlinear INS mechanics as system equations and a nonlinear ADM as observation equations, substituting the indirect filtering based on linear error equations. The strong nonlinearity generally calls for an unscented Kalman filter to accomplish the fusion process. Dealing with the model uncertainty, the inaccurate statistical characteristics of the noise and the potential nonpositive definiteness of the covariance matrix, an improved square-root unscented H∞ filter (ISRUHF) is derived in the paper, in which the robust factor [Formula: see text] is further expanded into a diagonal matrix [Formula: see text], to improve the accuracy and robustness of the integrated navigation system. Corresponding simulations as well as real flight tests based on a small-scale fixed-wing aircraft are operated and ISRUHF shows superiority compared with the commonly used fusion algorithm.