On In Situ Calibration of SINS and Doppler Dead Reckoning Navigation System

Abstract

This paper addresses a practical problem arising in the calibration of bottom-lock doppler velocity log for the navigation of surface ships. Firstly, a dead reckoning navigation algorithm and briefly error analyze are proposed. Then, employing ship’s true trajectory and calculated trajectory, the rotational alignment offset between a bottom-lock doppler velocity log and a strapdown inertial navigation system as well as the scale factor error of the doppler velocity log can be experimentally determined using sensors commonly deployed with a vehicle in the field. It requires velocity values from the vehicle's doppler log and strapdown inertial navigation system, and absolute vehicle position fixes from a GPS receiver. Lake experiment results show that the calibration algorithm can calibrate the error parameters effectively, thus the position error decreases significantly after compensating the error parameters.