A low-cost GPS&INS integrated system based on a FPGA platform

Nowadays is common to find different applications where GPS and INS integration is achieved, such as: identifying track defects, guidance, navigation and control of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV), geo-referencing, etc. The combination between these navigation instruments provides higher accuracy in the positioning information than their stand-alone operation, due to the fact that it takes advantages of both instruments, but although there is a wide study of algorithms to evaluate GPS/INS fusion not many studies are undertaken to carry it out using small size, flexible and low cost platforms, which is a challenge in the next generation of navigation systems. Therefore this paper describes the development of a low-cost Loosely Coupled GPS/INS integration with a novel modular platform based on FPGA that presents small size, low power consumption architecture, it is also flexible and has a low risk system design methodology that can be useful in several applications. The platform is assessed by data coming from a flight simulator called FlightGear, this data is perturbed with noise, where has been considered information from real sensors. The platform also has a user friendly PDA-Web server interface to show the navigation solution in Google Maps.