A New Polar Transfer Alignment Algorithm with the Aid of a Star Sensor and Based on an Adaptive Unscented Kalman Filter

An Improved SINS Alignment Method Based on Adaptive Cubature Kalman Filter

Initial alignment is critical and indispensable for the inertial navigation system (INS), which determines the initial attitude matrix between the reference navigation frame and the body frame. The conventional initial alignment methods based on the Kalman-like filter require an accurate noise covariance matrix of state and measurement to guarantee the high estimation accuracy. However, in a real-life practical environment, the uncertain noise covariance matrices are often induced by the motion of the carrier and external disturbance. To solve the problem of initial alignment with uncertain noise covariance matrices and a large initial misalignment angle in practical environment, an improved initial alignment method based on an adaptive cubature Kalman filter (ACKF) is proposed in this paper. By virtue of the idea of the variational Bayesian (VB) method, the system state, one step predicted error covariance matrix, and measurement noise covariance matrix of initial alignment are adaptively estimated together. Simulation and vehicle experiment results demonstrate that the proposed method can improve the accuracy of initial alignment compared with existing methods.

Hybrid Transverse Polar Navigation for High-Precision and Long-Term INSs

Transverse navigation has been proposed to help inertial navigation systems (INSs) fill the gap of polar navigation ability. However, as the transverse system does not have the ability of navigate globally, a complicated switch between the transverse and the traditional algorithms is necessary when the system moves across the polar circles. To maintain the inner continuity and consistency of the core algorithm, a hybrid transverse polar navigation is proposed in this research based on a combination of Earth-fixed-frame mechanization and transverse-frame outputs. Furthermore, a thorough analysis of kinematic error characteristics, proper damping technology and corresponding long-term contributions of main error sources is conducted for the high-precision INSs. According to the analytical expressions of the long-term navigation errors in polar areas, the 24-h period symmetrical oscillation with a slowly divergent amplitude dominates the transverse horizontal position errors, and the first-order drift dominates the transverse azimuth error, which results from the g0 gyro drift coefficients that occur in corresponding directions. Simulations are conducted to validate the theoretical analysis and the deduced analytical expressions. The results show that the proposed hybrid transverse navigation can ensure the same accuracy and oscillation characteristics in polar areas as the traditional algorithm in low and mid latitude regions.

Sculling Compensation Algorithm for SINS Based on Two-Time Scale Perturbation Model of Inertial Measurements

In order to decrease the velocity sculling error under vibration environments, a new sculling error compensation algorithm for strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) using angular rate and specific force measurements as inputs is proposed in this paper. First, the sculling error formula in incremental velocity update is analytically derived in terms of the angular rate and specific force. Next, two-time scale perturbation models of the angular rate and specific force are constructed. The new sculling correction term is derived and a gravitational search optimization method is used to determine the parameters in the two-time scale perturbation models. Finally, the performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated in a stochastic real sculling environment, which is different from the conventional algorithms simulated in a pure sculling circumstance. A series of test results demonstrate that the new sculling compensation algorithm can achieve balanced real/pseudo sculling correction performance during velocity update with the advantage of less computation load compared with conventional algorithms.

A Polar Initial Alignment Algorithm for Unmanned Underwater Vehicles

Due to its highly autonomy, the strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) is widely used in unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) navigation. Initial alignment is crucial because the initial alignment results will be used as the initial SINS value, which might affect the subsequent SINS results. Due to the rapid convergence of Earth meridians, there is a calculation overflow in conventional initial alignment algorithms, making conventional initial algorithms are invalid for polar UUV navigation. To overcome these problems, a polar initial alignment algorithm for UUV is proposed in this paper, which consists of coarse and fine alignment algorithms. Based on the principle of the conical slow drift of gravity, the coarse alignment algorithm is derived under the grid frame. By choosing the velocity and attitude as the measurement, the fine alignment with the Kalman filter (KF) is derived under the grid frame. Simulation and experiment are realized among polar, conventional and transversal initial alignment algorithms for polar UUV navigation. Results demonstrate that the proposed polar initial alignment algorithm can complete the initial alignment of UUV in the polar region rapidly and accurately.