Reduced Navigation Error Using a Multi-Sensor Fusion Technique and Its Application in Synthetic Aperture Radar

Modern navigation solutions rely on a combination of inertial measurement units (IMUs) and a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver to estimate a navigating body's position. In order to produce a high-fidelity solution, the current approach is to utilize a single ultra-low bias navigational grade IMU in the system. However, these high-quality IMUs are expensive, bulky, heavy, and require significant power consumption. This article proposes the fusion of multiple lower-quality IMUs to achieve near-identical or better positional accuracy as a single high-quality sensor to minimize cost, size, weight, and power (C-SWaP) without sacrificing the positional estimation accuracy. The primary focus is on a generalized method to fuse multiple position estimations from multiple co-located IMUs for a single navigating body. The proposed fusion algorithm is applied to simulated data produced by three precision micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) grade IMU modules (Analog Devices ADIS16465) from two different simulated flight paths. The absolute error is calculated between the position estimation generated by the proposed algorithm and the “truth” position provided by the simulation to determine the accuracy of the final result. The error of the proposed algorithm using the Analog Devices modules is then compared to the error between a single navigational grade IMU (NovAtel IMU-ISA-100 C) and the simulated “truth” position. The results show that using only three precision MEMS grade IMUs; the proposed method can produce identically accurate position estimations as a navigational grade IMU while drastically reducing C-SWaP. This result is further validated in measured data from an instrumented test setup using the above mentioned IMU configurations fused with a standard GPS and compared to a real-time kinematic GNSS setup used as a the third-party ground truth. In addition, the proposed method is further validated by integrating the two navigation systems with a Ku-band radar to produce synthetic aperture radar images. The image produced using the multi-IMU configuration as opposed to the navigation-grade IMU is more focused. Given these results, the proposed method has been validated in theory, simulation, and measurement, resulting in an order of magnitude reduction in cost, size, and power consumption, as well as a three-and-a-half times weight reduction of the overall IMU solution.