Navigation modeling for Force XXI Command and Control simulation

As the Army pursues a digitized battlefield through Force XXI initiatives and Advanced Warfighting Experiments (AWEs), the role of navigation systems is evolving. GPS provides a common, consistent and accurate location grid in which all battlefield players position and navigate themselves. Theater-wide time synchronization is also a benefit afforded by GPS. The advantages for coordinated operations such as rendezvous, amassing of force and heliborne support of ground maneuver elements are obvious. Navigation systems are, however, subject to errors. The errors may arise due to limitations inherent in the technology itself or may be induced by the operating environment including the effects of host platform dynamics, routes, or may be the result of counter measures employed against it. As Force XXI concepts are explored, the importance of navigation and the impact of navigation errors must be clearly understood. To further this understanding, CECOM has chartered the development of CIGNM, the CECOM Integrated GPS/Navigation Model. CIGNM provides a flexible operating environment that can run as a stand-alone, constructive simulation or can operate in a networked environment to play a role in a more complicated simulation architectures. CIGNM simulated environments include GPS jammers, terrain database, and a navigation entity manager that supports virtually any number of players. The navigation error model architecture embodied in CIGNM represents an object-oriented design that is flexible and supports a wide range of model fidelity. Integrated navigation systems architectures can be configured from the library of individual system models contained in the CIGNM model library. Existing models include GPS, Inertial Navigation Units, Doppler/AHRS, barometric altimeter, and ground vehicle odometer. The parameterized models can be configured to represent a wide range of system qualities and behaviors without source code modification. This paper describes the CIGNM operating capabilities and modeling options as well as a Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) experiment in which CIGNM was applied to explore NAVWAR program issues