Analysis of IMU Rotation Effects on Inertial Navigation System Errors

This paper aims to provide navigation system designers with a detailed examination of the impact of inertial measurement unit (IMU) rotation on error reduction or induction in a rotary inertial navigation system (INS). The designer of a rotary INS can select the optimal rotation rate and direction by considering the dynamics of the carrier and the dominant errors based on the findings reported in three concise tables within this paper. This paper presents a comprehensive analytical derivation of error equations for the attitude, velocity, and position of a rotational INS, validated through numerical simulations. Experiments using a rotation platform and actual data from a micro-electromechanical system IMU sensor are also conducted to verify the effectiveness of mitigating errors through IMU rotation. Moreover, a tensor-based modeling technique is employed to facilitate exploring the impact of IMU rotation around an arbitrary axis on accumulated errors. This approach provides a modular platform for further research on rotational navigation systems.