Observability Analysis of Alignment Errors in GPS/INS

Misalignment can be an important problem in the integration of GPS/INS. Observability analysis of the alignment errors in the integration of low-grade inertial sensors and multi-antenna GPS is presented in this paper. A control-theoretic approach is adopted to study the observability of time-varying error dynamics models. The relationship between vehicle motions and the observability of the errors in the lever arm and relative attitude between GPS antenna array and IMU is given. It is shown that alignment errors can be made observable through maneuvering. The change of acceleration makes the components of the relative attitude error that are orthogonal to the direction of the acceleration change observable. The change of angular velocity makes the components of the lever arm error that are orthogonal to the direction of the angular velocity observable. The motion of constant angular velocity has no influence on the estimation of the lever arm.