A control theory approach to optimizing turntable rate for single-axis rotary strapdown inertial navigation system

Due to its simplicity and potential for high navigation accuracy, the single-axis rotary strapdown inertial navigation system (INS) has attracted a large number of researchers in recent years and been used in broad applications as high precision and long duration INS. However, only a few researchers have paid attention on optimization of the turntable rate of the single-axis rotary gimbaled INS. There is still a dearth of effective methods to comprehensively study operation performance of the rotary strapdown INS and optimize its turntable rate. A stochastic observability approach is presented in this study to optimize the turntable rate and maintain good insight into estimation behaviors of the error states during initial alignment for the single-axis rotary strapdown INS when implementing the designed Kalman filter. The verification results by Mathematica software show that the stochastic observability approach is effective in optimizing the turntable rate and practical in investigating the designed navigation Kalman filter.