A consistent and robust Kalman filter design for in-motion alignment of inertial navigation system

The necessity recurrently comes up to align a strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) in a moving vehicle to avoid a long run-up of the inertial system before a start or launch command is issued. This in-motion alignment is therefore achieved by integrating SINS data with some external aiding source such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) by using some form of measurement matching method. Consequently, this paper illustrates a reliable in-motion alignment scheme for a low-cost strapdown inertial measurement unit (SIMU) using a consistent and robust Kalman filter (RKF) structure. An error model of the SINS is derived and the state vector comprises attitude, velocity, position and sensor errors. Velocity information from the GPS with maneuvering is employed as a measurement to the filter. Experimentation results show that the proposed filter is less sensitive to impulsive noise and gives better estimates of the navigation parameters. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.