THE INERTIAL SURVEYING SYSTEM (ISS) AND ITS INTEGRATION WITH OTHER GEODETIC POSITIONING SYSTEMS WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON THE GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM (GPS)

Abstract

There is a multitude of positioning systems used in practice. Some of which are purely terrestrial; while others are electronic navigation. either land. sea, or airborne; whereas the rest are based on the space satellite technology. Of course, one should expect such systems to vary in the final results and obtainable accuracy, according to the used type of sensors, the methodology of acquiring measurements, data processing and analysis, as well as the adopted coordinate frame, to which the sought position is related. Practical experimental and theoretical research works, have proved that the optimal positioning accuracies can be achieved, via integrating two or more of such positioning systems together, with an optimized methodology of minimizing the error budget inherently existing within each individual system. The present investigation concentrates on the Inertial Surveying System (ISS), and its integration with other positioning sensors, especially the Global Positioning System (GPS).