Gravity disturbance compensation for dual-axis rotary modulation inertial navigation system

Abstract

Gravity disturbance compensation is an important technique for improving the positioning accuracy of high-precision inertial navigation systems (INS). Aiming at the current problems of the resolution of gravity compensation background field and the robustness of gravity compensation algorithm are insufficient for gravity compensation. In this study, the error and frequency characteristics of INS caused by gravity disturbances are investigated. The gravity disturbance with a spatial resolution of 1’ × 1’ from a high-precision satellite altimetry marine gravity field model is preliminarily introduced into the initial alignment and pure INS calculation to implement the gravity compensation of the dual-axis rotary modulation INS. Detailed calculation results show that the east gravity disturbance affects the north attitude, and the north gravity disturbance affects the east attitude in the initial alignment. In the pure INS calculation, the horizontal gravity disturbance causes a navigation error in the form of Schuler oscillation. The INS navigation error caused by horizontal gravity disturbance is mainly affected by its amplitude; however, the horizontal gravity disturbance accuracy from the satellite altimetry model for INS gravity compensation can be ignored in practice. In addition, for low-speed underwater vehicles, the influence of high-frequency gravity disturbance signals on the INS position shows an increasing trend. Finally, the effectiveness of the gravity compensation achieved by the horizontal gravity disturbance from the satellite altimeter model is confirmed by a dynamic shipborne test. The positioning accuracy of the rotary modulation INS is maximally improved by approximately 17.9% after the horizontal gravity disturbance is compensated simultaneously in the pure INS calculation and the initial alignment.