An Accurate Calibration Method Based on Velocity in a Rotational Inertial Navigation System.

Rotation modulation is an effective method to enhance the accuracy of an inertial navigation system (INS) by modulating the gyroscope drifts and accelerometer bias errors into periodically varying components. The typical RINS drives the inertial measurement unit (IMU) rotation along the vertical axis and the horizontal sensors' errors are modulated, however, the azimuth angle error is closely related to vertical gyro drift, and the vertical gyro drift also should be modulated effectively. In this paper, a new rotation strategy in a dual-axis rotational INS (RINS) is proposed and the drifts of three gyros could be modulated, respectively. Experimental results from a real dual-axis RINS demonstrate that the maximum azimuth angle error is decreased from 0.04° to less than 0.01° during 1 h. Most importantly, the changing of rotation strategy leads to some additional errors in the velocity which is unacceptable in a high-precision INS. Then the paper studies the basic reason underlying horizontal velocity errors in detail and a relevant new calibration method is designed. Experimental results show that after calibration and compensation, the fluctuation and stages in the velocity curve disappear and velocity precision is improved.

Error analyses and calibration methods with accelerometers for optical angle encoders in rotational inertial navigation systems.

By rotating a strapdown inertial navigation system (INS) over one or more axes, a number of error sources originating from the employed sensors cancel out during the integration process. Rotary angle accuracy has an effect on the performance of rotational INS (RINS). The application of existing calibration methods based on gyroscope measurements is restricted by the structure of the inertial measurement unit (IMU) and scale factor stability of the gyroscope. The multireadhead method has problems in miniaturization and cost. Hence, optical angle encoder calibration methods using accelerometers are proposed, on the basis of navigation error and accuracy requirement analyses for a single-axis RINS. The test results show that the accuracy of calibration methods proposed is higher than 4 arcsec (1σ).