Performance Evaluation Criteria and Analysis of Navigation Systems Using Inertial Measurement Unit Technology

摘要

A primary aspect involved in the navigation of a wide variety of vehicles, such as ground vehicles and aircraft, is the use of inertial measurement units. The purpose of the inertial measurement unit is to provide an internal measure of the linear acceleration and angular velocity of the vehicle in order to be used by a navigation system in the dead-reckoning of the vehicle s position and attitude. Due to the nature of sensors, the measurement of the linear acceleration and angular velocity are corrupted by several error sources, such as bias and noise, amongst others. In order to assess the coupled impact of these error sources on the navigation accuracy for an arbitrary vehicle, a simulation and analysis tool is developed that can model several inertial measurement unit mechanizations, simulate the error sources encountered in the acquisition of measurement data, emulate the navigation software, and perform a range of statistical analyses via Monte Carlo simulation. The developed tool is applied to a ground vehicle navigation scenario in order to assess the performance of different sensors and provide conclusions as to when each sensor should be used to achieve the best navigation performance.