Design considerations of orientation estimation system

Orientation estimation System (OES) is one of the main building blocks of motion estimation frameworks in any moving vehicle. Though the grade of sensors and system may vary from navigational to commercial, the state estimation algorithm remains nearly same. Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) generally comprises of tri-axial Gyroscopes, Accelerometers and Magnetometers which measures the angular velocity, linear acceleration and magnetic field about each axis, respectively. The complete AHRS module has two functions: one as simple sensor interface to read data from the sensors, filter the data and retransmit to the base system where the data is processed and the second is to process this data onboard with help of micro-controller and the algorithm fed to it. This paper gives a brief overview of different hardware system over which the attitude estimation methodology can be applied. It is aimed to interface these sensors with microcontroller and also provide a brief guidelines on selection of different hardware platforms varying from FPGA to DSP to microcontroller.