Novel method of improving the alignment accuracy of SINS on revolving mounting base

In the process of initial alignment for a strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) on a stationary base, the east gyro drift rate is an important factor affecting the alignment accuracy of the azimuth misalignment angle. When the Kalman filtering algorithm is adopted in initial alignment, it yields a constant error in the estimation of the azimuth misalignment angle because the east gyro drift rate cannot be estimated. To improve the alignment accuracy, a novel alignment method on revolving mounting base is proposed. The Kalman filtering algorithm of extending the measured values is studied. The theory of spectral condition number is utilized to analyze the degrees of observability of states. Simulation results show that the estimation accuracy of the azimuth misalignment angle is greatly improved through a revolving mounting base, and the proposed method is efficient in initial alignment for a medium accurate SINS.