An accurate heading device transmitter is an absolute necessary for path tracking control, obstacle avoidance and cooperative navigation of unmanned vessels. It is an important equipment to complement marine traffic control system and radar. Heading devices right now utilize compass, mechanical gyroscopes, etc.
Compass has errors due to magnetic field and must be corrected with the magnetic declination for the area in order to improve the heading value. The mechanical gyroscope has inherent cumulative error aside from being vulnerable to shock and vibration. These problems result to very expensive yearly costs in order to maintain the devices in acceptable operation condition.
In this thesis proposed GPGyro compass. It is proposed that utilized the GPS in complementing the errors of compass and gyroscope. The GPS has an error when travelling on a curve due to the utilization of location points in calculating the bearing track (linear). The derivation of heading value with respect to short sampling interval for the path was affected by sensor measurement noise. Three GPS and gyroscope were used in order to solve this problem. and, Ad-hoc, EKF, EKF-CI algorithm were proposed using three GPS and gyroscope
Ad-hoc algorithm was applied to the individual GPS Fix and HDOP values to reduce the heading error. EKF utilized the GPS position, gyro yaw and Ad-hoc heading values in order to produce heading data with lesser error. This step proved accurate enough for straight path but not that good when in a curve. EKF-CI was then utilized for the three EKF in order to further reduce the overall error to a minimum. An antenna and controller were designed and manufactured in order to confirm that actual field tests would show the same performance.

Results showed that the sensor noise removal algorithm was able to improve heading accuracy whether going straight or in a curve.