JTIDS Relative Navigation Concepts.

I was program manager in the development of organizational design of the JTIDS relative navigation concepts. In such a community each vehicle can measure the distance between it and other members of the community, and it also has reported to it the positions of other members of the community. This basically involved a completely different way of thinking with respect to how one goes about navigating. In JTIDS, the primary interest was not where one is with respect to the world, but where each individual is with respect to the other. This involves the ability to not only know one's distance from other members of the community but also to point at the other members. What makes the problem complicated is that each individual vehicle must perform its own navigation solution. However the impact of their error on all the other aircraft have an impact on the navigation solution of the individual member.

We performed statistical simulations of multiple aircraft in a navigation community., each with a federated filter for performing its own navigation solution and providing additional reference data for other vehicles to use. It was covariance analysis. We established parameters and protocols which would yield a stable , effective navigation community