A description of the inertial technology used for guidance, control, and navigation, discussing in detail the principles, operation, and design of sensors, gyroscopes, and accelerometers, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of particular systems. An engineer with long practical experience in the field, the author elucidates such recent developments as fibre-optic gyroscopes, solid-state accelerometers, and the global positioning system. This will be of interest to researchers and practising engineers involved in systems engineering, aeronautics, space research, and navigation on both land and sea.

Automatic navigation makes ocean-going and flying safer and less expensive: Safer because machines are tireless and always vigilant; inexpensive because it does not use human navigators who are, unavoidably, highly trained and thus expensive people. What is more, unmanned deep space travel would be impossible without automatic navigation. Navigation can be automated with the radio systems Loran, Omega, and the Global Positioning System (GPS) of earth satellites, but its most versatile form is completely self-contained and is called inertial navigation. It uses gyroscopes and accelerometers (inertial sensors) to measure the state of motion of the vehicle by noting changes in that state caused by accelerations. By knowing the vehicle's starting position and noting the changes in its direction and speed, one can keep track of the vehicle's present position. Mankind first used this technology in World War n, in guided weapons where cost was unimportant; only 20-30 years later did it become cheap enough to be used commercially. The electronics revolution, in which vacuum tubes were replaced by integrated circuits, has dramatically altered the field of inertial navigation. Early inertial systems used complex mechanical gimbal structures and mechanical gyroscopes with spinning wheels. The gimbals allowed the gyroscopes to stabilize a mass (called a "platform") so that it remained in a fixed attitude relative to a chosen coordinate frame, even as the vehicle turned around any or all of its three major axes.

Modern inertial sensors and systems cover more than five decades of continuous research and development involving various branches of science and engineering. Various technologies have emerged in an evolutionary manner surpassing the earlier ones in performance and reliability. The subject is still growing with proliferation in newer cost effec-tive applications, while its wider usage in aerospace systems continues. This book exposes the readers to the subject of inertial navigation, the inertial sensors and inertial systems in a unified manner while emphasizing the growth areas in emerging technologies such as micro-electromechanical inertial sensors, satellite navigation, satellite navigation integrated inertial navigation, hemispherical resonator gyro, vibrating beam accelerometer, interferometric fibre optic gyro, inertial sensor signal processing, redundant inertial systems and the quite recent emergence of cold atom interferometer based inertial sensors. The contents are imaginatively designed that will of interest to a wide spectrum of readers. The book has been written with utmost lucidity and clarity and explanations provided with a large number of illustrative figures. Besides being an ideal introduction to the principles of inertial sensors and systems for undergraduate and postgraduate students of aerospace engineering, the topics dealt with will also be of benefit to practising engineers and can assist the researchers to locate excellent references for research work. The authors have had three decades of design and application research experience in premier research institutions and have made use of their experience in giving a user-friendly shape to the book.

Inertial navigation is widely used for the guidance of aircraft, missiles ships and land vehicles, as well as in a number of novel applications such as surveying underground pipelines in drilling operations. This book discusses the physical principles of inertial navigation, the associated growth of errors and their compensation. It draws current technological developments, provides an indication of potential future trends and covers a broad range of applications. New chapters on MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) technology and inertial system applications are included.

The emerging technology of very inexpensive inertial sensors is available for navigation as never before. The book lays the analytical foundation for understanding and implementing the navigation equations. It starts by demystifying the central theme of the frame rotation using such algorithms as the quaternions, the rotation vector and the Euler angles. After developing navigation equations, the book introduces the computational issues and discusses the physical aspects that are tied to implementing these equations. The book then explains alignment techniques.Introduction to Modern Navigation Systems offers an efficient algorithm for polar navigation. It also shows how to enhance the performance of the inertial system when aided by the Global Positioning System. It is an appropriate textbook for senior undergraduate and graduate students in aeronautical and electrical engineering. It could also be used as a reference book for practitioners in the field.

An updated guide to GNSS and INS, and solutions to real-world GPS/INS problems with Kalman filtering Written by recognized authorities in the field, this second edition of a landmark work provides engineers, computer scientists, and others with a working familiarity with the theory and contemporary applications of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), Inertial Navigational Systems (INS), and Kalman filters. Throughout, the focus is on solving real-world problems, with an emphasis on the effective use of state-of-the-art integration techniques for those systems, especially the application of Kalman filtering. To that end, the authors explore the various subtleties, common failures, and inherent limitations of the theory as it applies to real-world situations, and provide numerous detailed application examples and practice problems, including GNSS-aided INS, modeling of gyros and accelerometers, and SBAS and GBAS. Drawing upon their many years of experience with GNSS, INS, and the Kalman filter, the authors present numerous design and implementation techniques not found in other professional references. This Second Edition has been updated to include: GNSS signal integrity with SBAS Mitigation of multipath, including results Ionospheric delay estimation with Kalman filters New MATLAB programs for satellite position determination using almanac and ephemeris data and ionospheric delay calculations from single and dual frequency data New algorithms for GEO with L1 /L5 frequencies and clock steering Implementation of mechanization equations in numerically stable algorithms To enhance comprehension of the subjects covered, the authors have included software in MATLAB, demonstrating the working of the GNSS, INS, and filter algorithms. In addition to showing the Kalman filter in action, the software also demonstrates various practical aspects of finite word length arithmetic and the need for alternative algorithms to preserve result accuracy.

Navigation fundamentally provides information on position, velocity and direction which are needed for travel in ocean, land, air and in space. The myriad forms of navigation developed so far are collectively called modern navigation. This recent text discusses new promising developments that will assist the students when they enter their future professional career. It is the outcome of authors’ wide experience in teaching, research and development in the field of navigation and inertial sensors. The content of the book is designed to impart adequate knowledge to the students in the area of navigation and related sensors. The text discusses inertial navigation, inertial sensors, MEMS based inertial sensors, satellite navigation, integrated inertial navigation, signal processing of inertial sensors and their applications. The chapters introduce all the topics in an easy to understand manner so that an appreciative understanding of the text matter can be made without resorting to equations and mathematics. Considerable references have been provided to enable both the students and the professors to dwell and learn more on the topics of their interest. This textbook is primarily intended to meet the academic needs of undergraduate and postgraduate students of aerospace engineering and avionics.