An Implementation of Direction Cosine Matrix in rocket payload dynamics attitude monitoring

Abstract

Rocket, one of the aerospace vehicle capable to being used for implement various interests in many fields, can maintain the sovereignty of the State. Rocket generally do not stand alone, but embedded with payload that contains sensors, processor, and transceiver. The payload will be equipped with Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) which generally consists of a gyroscope and an accelerometer. This is intended to determine the rocket dynamics attitude that play an important role in the rocket control system. Problems arise considering the accelerometer and gyroscope each has its deficiencies. Accelerometer is sensitive to small external force and gyroscope has a tendency to drift. Both are not able to determine rockets heading orientation relative to Earth, thus they will require a magnetometer to solve the problem. The whole series of these deficiencies can be eliminated by combining measurement data from the three. IMU with 9 DOF and Direction Cosine Matrix algorithm are expected to produce rockets dynamics attitude data trustworthy.