GP41B-06 Determining Geophysical Map Requirements for Magnetic Navigation using Cramér Rao Lower Bound Analysis

With the rapid development of low-cost, easily-accessible GPS jamming and spoofing equipment, a resilient navigation alternative will soon be necessary to ensure robust and safe navigation under various environmental conditions. Magnetic navigation has emerged as a front-runner to fill this increasingly critical need. The accuracy and precision of magnetic navigation depends inherently on the quality of the underlying crustal magnetic field maps, but the map resolution and measurement noise necessary to meet the requirements of different use cases are yet unknown. We conducted Cramer Rao Lower Bound analysis on simulated trajectories over altered versions of the Magnetic Anomaly Map of Australia Version 7 to examine the performance effects of various magnetic map resolutions and measurement noise levels across a variety of aerospace use cases. This talk presents suggested minimum map resolution and magnetic noise combinations necessary to support current navigation performance requirements in each stage of flight.