Citation: Niu, M.; Ma, H.; Sun, X.;
Huang, T.; Song, K. A New
Self-Calibration and Compensation
Method for Installation Errors of
Uniaxial Rotation Module Inertial
Navigation System. Sensors 2022, 22,
3812. https://doi.org/10.3390/
s22103812
Academic Editor: Andrzej Stateczny
Received: 22 April 2022
Accepted: 16 May 2022
Published: 17 May 2022
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Article
A New Self-Calibration and Compensation Method for
Installation Errors of Uniaxial Rotation Module Inertial
Navigation System
Meng Niu
1
, Hongyu Ma
2
, Xinglin Sun
1,
* , Tiantian Huang
1
and Kaichen Song
2
1
College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China;
nium@zju.edu.cn (M.N.); tthuang@zju.edu.cn (T.H.)
2
School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China;
3170101710@zju.edu.cn (H.M.); kcsong@zju.edu.cn (K.S.)
* Correspondence: xlsun@zju.edu.cn
Abstract:
Calibration and compensation techniques are essential to improve the accuracy of the
strap-down inertial navigation system. Especially for the new uniaxial rotation module inertial
navigation system (URMINS), replacing faulty uniaxial rotation modules introduces installation
errors between modules and reduces navigation accuracy. Therefore, it is necessary to calibrate
these systems effectively and compensate for the installation error between modules. This paper
proposes a new self-calibration and compensation method for installation errors without additional
information and equipment. Using the attitude, velocity, and position differences between the two
sets of navigation information output from URMINS as measurements, a Kalman filter is constructed
and the installation error is estimated. After URMINS is compensated for the installation error, the
average of the demodulated redundant information is taken to calculate the carrier’s navigation
information. The simulation results show that the proposed method can effectively assess the
installation error between modules with an estimation accuracy better than 5”. Experimental results
for static navigation show that the accuracy of heading angle and positioning can be improved
by 73.12% and 81.19% after the URMINS has compensated for the estimated installation errors.
Simulation and experimental results further validate the effectiveness of the proposed self-calibration
and compensation method.
Keywords:
inertial navigation system; uniaxial rotation module; self-calibration; installation errors;
information redundancy
1. Introduction
The superiority of a strap-down inertial navigation system (SINS) is that no external
reference is needed to determine the vehicle’s attitude, velocity, or position, and no infor-
mation is transmitted to the environment [
1
]. Therefore, it is extensively used in vehicles,
submarines, missiles, aircraft and ships [
2
–
5
]. A global positioning system (GPS) is usu-
ally integrated with SINS to improve the carrier’s navigation and positioning accuracy.
However, GPS is unavailable in some environments, such as underwater navigation and
indoor localization [
6
]. Compared with the GPS, the SINS has the advantages of good
concealment and strong anti-interference capability and can be applied in GPS-denied
environments such as underwater navigation [
7
,
8
]. However, the drawback of SINS is that
navigation errors accumulate with time owing to the drift-bias error of internal sensors such
as gyroscope and accelerometer, which deteriorates the navigation accuracy of SINS [
9
].
Since the carrier may work in a covert environment, no other information is available to
fuse with the SINS to suppress errors. Furthermore, if sensors in the SINS fail, these failed
sensors must be replaced and maintained for the system to function correctly. However,
reinstalling new sensors introduces errors into the system. The traditional method of
Sensors 2022, 22, 3812. https://doi.org/10.3390/s22103812 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
