ARETE ASSOCIATES — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N151-032

Description

The U.S. submarine force relies heavily upon GPS for accurate position fixing and safe navigation when far from land. However, given the relative ease with which GPS can be jammed or disabled, this reliance is cause for concern. The submarine force is in need of an alternative position fixing source that is robust to such interference efforts. Aret? Associates proposes to address this problem with the development of Hyperion, an automated celestial navigation algorithm that will provide accurate position fixes with little burden to the operator. Based on a submarine?s assumed position, Hyperion will select candidate stars and direct the periscope system to collect images of these stars. It will then detect the stars in the images and associate them with almanac data. Finally, it will calculate a celestial rotation to align the imaged stars with their known positions based on the assumed position. The position fix will be generated by translating this celestial rotation into an offset to be applied to the submarine?s assumed position.