Error and Performance Analysis of MEMS-based Inertial Sensors with a Low-cost GPS Receiver.

Minha Park,Yang Gao

doi:10.3390/s8042240

Abstract

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), have been widely utilized and their applications are becoming popular, not only in military or commercial applications, but also for everyday life. Although GPS measurements are the essential information for currently developed land vehicle navigation systems (LVNS), GPS signals are often unavailable or unreliable due to signal blockages under certain environments such as urban canyons. This situation must be compensated in order to provide continuous navigation solutions. To overcome the problems of unavailability and unreliability using GPS and to be cost and size effective as well, Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) based inertial sensor technology has been pushing for the development of low-cost integrated navigation systems for land vehicle navigation and guidance applications. This paper will analyze the characterization of MEMS based inertial sensors and the performance of an integrated system prototype of MEMS based inertial sensors, a low-cost GPS receiver and a digital compass. The influence of the stochastic variation of sensors will be assessed and modeled by two different methods, namely Gauss-Markov (GM) and AutoRegressive (AR) models, with GPS signal blockage of different lengths. Numerical results from kinematic testing have been used to assess the performance of different modeling schemes.

Highlights

Recent advances in Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) based inertial sensors are quite significant in that they promise to be smaller and cheaper systems
The MEMS based inertial sensors’ performance will be investigated and a land vehicle navigation system prototype will be developed by integrating MEMS based inertial sensors, a low cost Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver and a digital compass
With an initial position from Precise Point Positioning (PPP) processing of GPS measurements and initial heading corrected by Canadian Geomagnetic Reference Field (CGRF), a Kalman filter error estimation has been conducted which is composed of a dynamic model using measurements of X/Y axes of accelerometer, Yaw rate gyroscope of RGA300CA and a measurement model using measurements of GPS-9543 module

Summary

Introduction

Recent advances in Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) based inertial sensors are quite significant in that they promise to be smaller and cheaper systems. MEMS based inertial sensors have recently drawn great attention as aiding GPS outages with low inherent cost, small size, low power consumption, and solid reliability. Their performance is still considered poor in accuracy for certain applications. The MEMS based inertial sensors’ performance will be investigated and a land vehicle navigation system prototype will be developed by integrating MEMS based inertial sensors, a low cost GPS receiver and a digital compass

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Conclusion