A Fast Calibration Method for Dynamic Lever-Arm Parameters for IMUs Based on the Backtracking Scheme

Calibration is vital to improving the accuracy of the strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS). Calibration is one of the crucial phases before the operation of SINS and requires high accuracy and speed. Traditional system-level calibration methods have the disadvantages of long calibration times and complicated path design. A fast calibration method for the lever arm and other error parameters is proposed in this article. To shorten the calibration time and improve the calibration accuracy, a backtracking calibration method in inertial frames based on the reduced-order Kalman filter is proposed. Simulations and experiments are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the novel calibration method. The calibration process can be completed in 10 min, which is greatly shortened compared with traditional methods. The calibration time is shortened, and the calibration accuracy is improved. Furthermore, navigation experiments show that the velocity and position accuracies of the SINS are improved significantly after compensation with the calibration results, fully illustrating the significance of the proposed calibration method in improving the navigation performance.