Effects of Geodetic Uncertainties on a Damped Inertial Navigation System

Gravity uncertainties are an inexorable source of error in all inertial navigation systems and are particularly important in high-quality inertial navigation systems. In this paper the steady-state rms errors that are excited in a damped inertial navigation system are analytically determined for four gravity uncertainty models and two vehicle maneuver models. The statistical approach used in this paper is compared with an alternate scheme ("direct simulation") that does not require statistical models for gravity uncertainties.