A Kalman filtering approach for Integrating MEMS-based INS and GPS for land vehicle applications

Global Positioning System (GPS) and Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) are used for positioning and attitude determination in a wide range of applications. Since the usage of high performance INS is limited by its high cost, for general application areas low-cost INS units are used. Over the last few years, a number of low-cost inertial sensors have become available. However, these low cost sensors have large errors which increase with time. So GPS measurements can be used to correct the INS sensor errors to provide a cost-effective solution with good accuracy in real-time navigation. The integration of GPS and INS is done using a Kalman filter, using the loose coupling method. The application of this integration strategy for land vehicle navigation system (LV NS) is discussed. In this paper, the performance of integration system is discussed under different GPS availability scenarios. KeywordsInertial navigation system, Global positioning system, Kalman filter.