Results of field testing for an integrated gps/ins unit based on low-cost redundant mems sensors

This paper presents the results of field-testing for an integrated GPS/INS unit composed by a redundant configuration of consumer-grade MEMS inertial sensors. Last generation consumer grade MEMS gyros have several distinctive features that make their use of interest also for professional navigation applications, such as the ones related to drones. They have the advantages of reduced weight, compact configuration, low power consumption and easy integration with electronic boards. Conversely, the overall error is more than an order of magnitude worse than industrial grade sensors. However, by assembling a set of inertial sensors with a certain designed configuration, the redundancy of each axis in the navigation framework is efficiently improved, as well as the accuracy of the whole IMU. The IMU can make full use of the redundant observation data of these sensors, by averaging multiple measurements about the same axis. A van test has been conducted to estimate the performance of the integrated navigation system in urban canyon conditions. The GPS system issues, such as high sensibility to multipath and outages when the GPS signal is blocked by external agents, like buildings or vegetation, is well mitigated by integrating the GPS system with the redundant IMU.