{
  "abstract": "Airborne magnetic anomaly navigation provides a passive, unjammable alternative to Global Navigation Satellite Systems positioning by matching magnetometer measurements against a lithospheric magnetic anomaly map. Existing map-matching algorithms either assume a Gaussian posterior (extended Kalman filter), require Monte Carlo sampling (particle filter), or discard posterior uncertainty in favour of a single optimal path (Viterbi algorithm). Here we formulate map matching as inference on a chain-structured factor graph and solve it segment by segment using the forward-backward algorithm, which yields a discrete posterior over candidate positions and its Shannon entropy $H_t$ at time $t$. Over the \\texttt{Renfrew\\_395} map, $10^3$ synthetic trials yield a median position error of $32.7$ m, $91\\%$ below the median inertial drift of $362$ m. On these trials and $10^3$ flight paths, the median error is $43\\%$ below the extended Kalman filter and particle filter. Across these paths, a threshold on segment-level entropy detects $47\\%$ of segments with errors above two map cells and $94\\%$ of those above three, at a $10\\%$ false-alarm rate. The foregoing results indicate that $H_t$ provides a truth-free diagnostic of map-conditioned navigation ambiguity.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.38047",
  "author_total": 7,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Joseph O'Leary"
    },
    {
      "name": "Tapio Simula"
    },
    {
      "name": "Tom Kimpson"
    },
    {
      "name": "Corey Davey"
    },
    {
      "name": "Wenchao Li"
    },
    {
      "name": "Andrew D. Greentree"
    },
    {
      "name": "Allison Kealy"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/fjajj81pvc7r1.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.38047",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "fjajj81pvc7r1",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.38047",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "LicenseRef-arXiv-nonexclusive-1.0",
  "licence_label": "arXiv licence",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "cs.RO"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "eess.SP"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "physics.geo-ph"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.38047",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-27",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/fjajj81pvc7r1.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:36:23Z",
      "native_id": "2610.38047",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.38047"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "earth",
      "origin": "arxiv:physics.geo-ph",
      "subfield": "geophysics"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Forward-Backward Map Matching for Airborne Magnetic Anomaly Navigation",
  "title_text": "Forward-Backward Map Matching for Airborne Magnetic Anomaly Navigation",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-01T12:20:44Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/fjajj81pvc7r1",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}