Navigation Mode Transition Design and Performance Validation for Heterogeneous Sensor Integration under Urban Flight Environment

This paper presents methods of mode transition in the integrated navigation based on selective sensor configurations to ensure continuous and reliable navigation performance in urban flight environments such as high-rise buildings. First, this paper characterizes candidate techniques using conventional DOP and error covariance for quantitative analysis of the navigation mode transition. Then, this paper proposes a new hybrid logic that reflects the deployment of heterogeneous sensor measurements considering characteristics of the urban flight environment. Through the proposed mode transition algorithm, enhanced estimation performance is achieved between GPS/INS integrated navigation and map-aided Range/INS integrated navigation. Finally, simulation and practical flight experiments under the urban flight environment demonstrated the suggested improvement of navigation performance.