A ship’s position as determined by the observation of celestial bodies is a traditional method with important advantages, such as reliability, independence and a low cost. Global satellite navigation systems, with many outstanding advantages in terms of accuracy and continuity, have become the main method of ship positioning in offshore navigation. Ship positioning using celestial body observation is still a backup method in the event of unusual incidents. Currently, during the daytime, it is only possible to apply the celestial navigation method to determine the ship’s position by observing the altitude of the sun. In order to reduce geometrical errors, this traditional method requires time for a certain change of the azimuth of the sun and therefore depends much on estimated errors and the effects of external conditions. Moreover, the basic requirement of the backup method is to provide a ship position quickly during offshore navigation, without the position being determined by a global satellite positioning system. To overcome the above limitations, the paper proposes a new approach to determine a ship's position by simultaneously observing the altitude and azimuth of the sun. A program for calculating the position of a ship with high reliability and applicability based on the new algorithm is also devised and shown to be highly effective in practice.

The methods of celestial navigation to fix the ship position in line with the stars are only applied in the twilight time interval when both the celestial bodies and the horizon apppear simultaneously. This means that these methods cannot be used during the night even if the stars are visible. This paper proposes a novel approach which uses the azimuth of the celestial body in order to establish the great circle equation relating the observed body to the ship position when the celestial bodies appear. In addition, the proposed method does not demand the horizon and sextant equipment as with the previous methods. The key advantage which differentiates this method from previous ones is its ability to determine the ship position during the night when the horizon is invisible. Firstly, the vector calculus is applied to find the mathematical equation for the ship position through analyzing the relationship between the ship position and the great-circle azimuth of the observed body. Secondly, the equation system for the ship position is expanded into a standard system in which the input for the proposed mathematical system are the great-circle azimuth and the coordinates of the observed body. Finally, the numerical technique is also proposed to solve the nonlinear system for the ship position. To verify the validation of this proposed method, a numerical experiment is carried out and the results show that it can be applied well in practice.

이동형해상감시레이더는 해안을 따라 이동하며, 해역을 감시하는 기능을 수행한다. 초기 레이더의 방향은 차량의 선수방향으로 정 렬되어 있기 때문에 전개지 이동 후 신속하게 표적의 방위각을 획득하기 위해서는 변경된 차량의 선수방향을 아는 것이 중요하다. 차량의 선 수방위각은 자이로 컴퍼스, GPS 컴퍼스 혹은 전자 컴퍼스로 획득할 수 있다. 그 중에서 전자 컴퍼스는 가격이 저렴할 뿐만 아니라, 부피가 작고, 안정화 시간이 짧아서 빠른 기동성을 요구하는 이동형해상감시레이더에 적합하다. 하지만, 지자계 센서를 사용하다보니 주변 자장의 영 향으로 오차가 발생될 수 있으며, 발생된 오차는 초기 위성의 자동추적을 어렵게 하고, 레이더의 탐지정확도를 떨어뜨린다. 따라서 본 논문에 서는 이동형해상감시레이더 및 정지 위성간의 두 위치좌표로부터 측지학적 역 문제 해석을 통해 기준 방위각을 산출하고 이를 위성 안테나가 실제 지향한 방위각과 비교 산출하여 얻어진 보정값을 레이더에 반영하는 자동보정절차를 제안하고 제안된 방법을 실제 운용 중인 이동형해 상감시레이더에 적용함으로써 운용가능성 및 편리성을 검증하였다.