A Novel Polar Rapid Transfer Alignment for Shipborne SINS Under Arbitrary Misalignments

The traditional polar rapid transfer alignment (RTA) are generally modeled under small angle misalignment assumption. Those linearized and nonlinear polar RTA error models presented, so far, are not capable of accurately representing the nonlinear properties of the system where the all-orientation large attitude errors happen between the master and slave strap-down inertial navigation systems (SINS). It cannot satisfy the accuracy for the SINS initialization and has a singularity in computation. In this article, the misalignment quaternion in the grid frame was selected as the state and observation. An innovative polar RTA algorithm using the quaternion matching and the augmented unscented Kalman filter (UKF) was then proposed to estimate all-orientation large attitude misalignments in polar regions. Furthermore, the associated error propagation equations were redesigned in the grid frame and with compensations for the lever-arm effect. The augmented UKF model was further adjusted to apply. Simulation and semi-physical experiment results demonstrated that the performance of the innovative polar RTA algorithm proposed here outperformed those via traditional polar RTA techniques, especially with 3-axis large-angle misalignments, and was even robust with the disturbance of lever-arm effect aggravated by the harsh polar environment.