Vessel attitude determination system and method

摘要

A portable attitude determination apparatus and method are disclosed that can be used with a ship docking system. At least two receivers on a vessel receive Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite data. GPS carrier phase measurements are used to determine attitude (i.e., roll, pitch and yaw angles) of a moving platform. The phase measurements are processed to determine a precise vector from one receiver phase center to the other. The azimuth and elevation of a baseline vector is then computed. Float ambiguities between the two receivers are determined, and are used to provide initial estimates of antenna baseline length and attitude. A search procedure is then employed to find the actual integer ambiguities. Only GPS observables are needed; no other external data input is required.