Performance Investigation of Real-time MEMS-IMU/GNSS Integrated System

J. Zhang, S. Knedlik, O. Loffeld

Abstract:	The rapid development of Micro-Electric-Mechanical- System (MEMS) technology enables the emerging of new inertial sensors, which are compact, cost-effective and yield improved performance. Meanwhile, the processing ability of the Digital Signal Processor (DSP) is increasingly upgraded to cater for the computational demanding applications. A real-time INS/GNSS integrated system based on a DSP platform is developed in this paper with these modern features. This prototype uses one commercial GPS receiver and one MEMS-based Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) in consideration of the system cost and compactness. The INS/GPS integration is accomplished on a floating-point DSP. This system design features an improved data synchronization scheme by utilizing the hardware features of both sensors. Moreover, the powerful floating-point DSP enhances the execution of the integration by its efficient data transfer mechanism and strong processing capability. A loosely-coupled INS/GPS integration is currently implemented based on an error state model using a conventional Kalman Filer (KF). The strapdown INS uses raw accelerometer measurements and the Euler angles from the IMU to calculate the final navigation solution (position and velocity). This paper describes the hardware structure of the proposed system and explains the improved data synchronization scheme. The system software design is presented as well. The system capability is analyzed to investigate the system performance under the current configuration from two aspects, while the system feasibility is proven at the same time. Static experiments are carried out to evaluate the real-time navigation performance. Different update rates of the GPS data are applied in the test as well. The real-time results from the DSP are compared with the simulation results and discussed further for future improvement.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 22nd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2009) September 22 - 25, 2009 Savannah International Convention Center Savannah, GA
Pages:	978 - 986
Cite this article:	Zhang, J., Knedlik, S., Loffeld, O., "Performance Investigation of Real-time MEMS-IMU/GNSS Integrated System," Proceedings of the 22nd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2009), Savannah, GA, September 2009, pp. 978-986.
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