Simulation Platform for Transfer Alignment

Alignment is mandatory for any inertial navigation system (INS) before running in the navigation phase. It is a process, that the INS finds its own attitude including roll, pitch and heading. During the motion, the transfer alignment (TA) is used. Transfer alignment is a method of finding the initial attitude of a Slave INS by using a Master INS, which is a more precise external INS system. The paper presents a simulation platform for designing the TA algorithm. The platform contains the Master INS and Slave INS. The Master and the slave are mounted to different places in a vehicle and also have different orientations, so the Master data and Slave data are different. The core of the platform is transfer functions, which describe the relationship between the Master data and the Slave data. In this paper, the transfer functions will be mathematically demonstrated and verified by simulation. The simulation platform provides all sensor data and navigation data, which are needed for designing the TA algorithm.