Gyrocompassing Based Attitude and Azimuth Determination System Using MEMS Inertial Sensors

The objective of this project is to demonstrate the feasibility of a Gyrocompassing Based Attitude and Azimuth Determination System Using MEMS Inertial Sensors. This attitude and azimuth determination system can be used in a handheld laser range finder for providing targeting capability for laser-guided, GPS-guided, and conventional munitions. The key advantage of the gyrocompassing approach based attitude and azimuth determination is that it is autonomous or self-calibrated. It is not affected by magnetic fields and needs no external information, such as initial conditions or external reference. Traditionally, the gyrocompassing approach needs high accuracy gyros and accelerometers such as RLG, FOG and DTG, which are expensive and large in size. The technology advancements in recent years have transformed the inertial sensors, especially the advances of the new technology based inertial vibration sensors, such as Hemispherical Resonator Gyros (HRG), MEMS quartz gyros and MEMS quartz accelerometers. Also, advanced processing algorithms and real-time sensor error calibration methods realized by powerful computers/microprocessors can lower the accuracy requirement for gyrocompass sensors. In the Phase I project, we propose, analyze, and finally demonstrate through simulation the feasibility of several gyrocompassing system configurations that use high accuracy MEMS gyros and accelerometers for attitude and azimuth determination applications.