A dynamic calibration method of installation misalignment angles between two inertial navigation systems

Generally, in order to ensure the reliability of Navigation system, vehicles are usually equipped with two or more sets of inertial navigation systems (INSs). Fusion of navigation measurement information from different sets of INSs can improve the accuracy of autonomous navigation effectively. However, due to the existence of misalignment angles, the coordinate axes of different systems are usually not in coincidence with each other absolutely, which would lead to serious problems when integrating the attitudes information. Therefore, it is necessary to precisely calibrate and compensate the misalignment angles between different systems. In this paper, a dynamic calibration method of misalignment angles between two systems was proposed. This method uses the speed and attitude information of two sets of INSs during the movement of the vehicle as measurements to dynamically calibrate the misalignment angles of two systems without additional information sources or other external measuring equipment, such as turntable. A mathematical model of misalignment angles between two INSs was established. The simulation experiment and the INSs vehicle experiments were conducted to verify the effectiveness of the method. The results show that the calibration accuracy of misalignment angles between the two sets of systems can reach to 1” while using the proposed method.