Quantitative Analysis to the Impacts of IMU Quality in GPS/INS Deep Integration

In the Global Positioning System (GPS)/Inertial Navigation System (INS) deep integration system, the pure negative effect of the INS aiding is mainly the INS navigation error that is independent with the motion dynamics, which determine whether the INS aiding is worthy. This paper quantitatively assesses the negative effects of the inertial aiding information from different grades of INS by modeling the phase-locked loops (PLLs) based on the scalar-based GPS/INS deep integration system under stationary conditions. Results show that the largest maneuver-independent velocity error caused by the error sources of micro-electro-mechanical System (MEMS) inertial measurement unit (IMU) is less than 0.1 m/s, and less than 0.05 m/s for the case of tactical IMU during the typical GPS update interval (i.e., 1 s). The consequent carrier phase tracking error in the typical tracking loop is below 1.2 degrees for MEMS IMU case and 0.8 degrees for the tactical IMU case, which are much less than the receiver inherent errors. Conclusions can be reached that even the low-end MEMS IMU has the ability of aiding the receiver signal tracking. The tactical grade IMU can provide higher quality aiding information and has potential for the open loop tracking of GPS.