Design study of an avionics navigation microcomputer

A microcomputer program to solve the complex task of air-borne navigation was developed to demonstrate the practicality of replacing costly general purpose digital computers with relatively inexpensive dedicated microcomputers on-board naval aircraft. The microcomputer program showed that microcomputers have sufficient speed and accuracy to solve the navigation problem. In order to overcome the microcomputer's major deficiencies, speed and accuracy, special arithmetic subprograms based on table look-up were developed to trade inexpensive memory for more speed. An application of graph theory in the form of process graphs was made to facilitate the development and documentation of the navigation program. To aid in the testing of the microcomputer program, a Fortran simulation program was developed to confirm the results of an error bound analysis of the navigation program.http://archive.org/details/designstudyofavi00mccrLieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited