Web-Based MEMS Inertial Navigation Simulator

Z. Bennour, R. Jr. Landry, R. Giroux, A. Constantinescu, G. Gavidia

Abstract:	"The integration of MEMS sensors in an inertial navigation system (INS) fused with GPS will lead to numerous applications, mainly driven by the low-cost nature of this technology. Then, it is not surprising that great interest has been generated toward low cost inertial navigation systems (INS) in the last decade. Although the basic principles of INS are quite simple, the analysis of its performance and the impact of sensor quality on the overall result are quite complex. In fact, one particular aspect of INS design is the complexity to evaluate new algorithms and innovative digital signal processing with low cost MEMS sensors and to access their performances in function of several kinds of mobile trajectories. Therefore, as most engineering applications, simulation is part of the design process of INS algorithm. Leveraging from earlier research work, this paper presents the development of a Web-based inertial navigation system (INS) simulator useful in a research laboratory. In addition, a new module generating trajectories for the simulator has been created by interfacing flight simulators like the one of Microsoft or the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) certified X-Plane. The core of the simulator is a Simulink-based model that contains a complete navigation algorithm, from the integration of the equations of motion to the extended Kalman filtering for error estimation. The INS part of the simulator first generates complete simulated inertial navigation measurements from a selected flight trajectory. Then, the user can have access to and modify the entire set of parameters of the INS including those of the navigation Kalman filter from a web-based interface. A typical noise model is added to the simulated inertial sensor measurements and to the GPS navigation solutions in order to approach the real performances of MEMS devices on the market. As a final result, the simulator provides to the user the navigation solutions computed by the model and also the true navigation solutions. An important part of this work is the analysis and the evaluation of the model, based on the navigation errors between the computed and the true navigation solutions, and the Kalman filter output characteristics. On the other hand, it is also possible to use the Web-based INS simulator to access a real-time platform of sensors. The hardware proof-of-concept demonstrator is a PC-104 combined with specific interface cards and a 6 degrees of freedom MEMS inertial sensor. As a general conclusion, the Web-based interface combined with the already proven rapid-prototyping scheme of Simulink provides a user-friendly and efficient approach to INS algorithm validation. This design tool will be applied to several applications now under consideration in the research laboratory. "
Published in:	Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (2005) June 27 - 29, 2005 Royal Sonesta Hotel Cambridge, MA
Pages:	1053 - 1061
Cite this article:	Bennour, Z., Landry, R. Jr., Giroux, R., Constantinescu, A., Gavidia, G., "Web-Based MEMS Inertial Navigation Simulator," Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (2005), Cambridge, MA, June 2005, pp. 1053-1061.
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