On the development of an inertial navigation error-budget system

This paper targets the development of an inertial navigation error-budget system for performance validation before actual field operation. The paper starts by studying the various errors that an inertial measurement unit (IMU) incorporates. A systematic approach of error modeling is proposed. The error models are integrated in time and added to the true measurement of the IMU to obtain the observed measurements. Simulation results are presented to show the contribution of the errors to the final measurement of the IMU. The IMU error model is blended with a GPS measurements' model and the performance of a GPS/IMU extended Kalman filter (EKF) to IMU errors is shown. The simulated IMU errors are essential to study IMU quality effect on an inertial navigation system's (INS) state estimate accuracy.