A fault-tolerant air data and inertial navigation reference system utilizes skewed axis inertial sensors and fault-tolerant redundant electronics to provide higher redundancy with fewer parts. Parallelly operating processor circuits each receive the individual outputs of six skewed-axis gyros and six skewed-axis accelerometers. Each processor independently processes parity equations using the outputs to identify malfunctioning sensors. Further, the output of each processor is transmitted to three parallelly operating voter circuits. The voters are operable to discard a processor if its output does not agree with the majority. The voter outputs are similarly fed back to the processor circuits, which compare these outputs, and discard any voter whose output disagrees with the majority, thus providing a completely integrated system.

Integrated fault-tolerant air data inertial reference system

Six gyros (131-136) and six accelerometers (141-146) are mounted to faces of a single sensor base member (10). The sensors are arranged such that their input axes all pass through a common centerpoint (CCP) and that the common centerpoint (CCP) is the center of gravity of the total assembly.

Skewed axis inertial sensor assembly

The present invention is a GPS system for navigation and attitude determination, comprising a sensor array including a convex hemispherical mounting structure having a plurality of mounting surfaces, and a plurality of antennas mounted to the mounting surfaces for receiving signals from space vehicles of a GPS constellation. The present invention also includes a receiver for collecting the signals and making navigation and attitude determinations. In an alternate embodiment the present invention may include two opposing convex hemispherical mounting structures, each of the mounting structures having a plurality of mounting surfaces, and a plurality of antennas mounted to the mounting surfaces.

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GPS compound eye attitude and navigation sensor and method

The invention discloses a six-redundancy-type optical fiber strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS). The system is composed of a structural component part, an inertial device part and a peripheral circuit part, wherein the inertial device part is installed on a regular dodecahedron IMU (inertial measurement unit) support of the structural component part, and the peripheral circuit part is distributed on the system body brink of the structural component part. In the invention, the regular dodecahedron is designed to be of a hollow structure, so that high stiffness and light weight of a system IMU table body are realized; redundant configuration is adopted, so that the accuracy and reliability of the inertial navigation system are improved; the separation of the optical path and circuit of an optical fiber gyroscope is basically realized in structure for a system optical fiber gyroscope, so that varying degrees of influences of temperature and temperature gradient change brought by circuit heating on the optical path are avoided; the system has stable performance and good adaptive capacity to environment, can bear a variety of environment test requirements similar to that born by the inertial navigation system, and has good real-time performance.

Six-redundancy-type optical fiber strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS)

Apparatus for stabilization and control of an aircraft includes a pair of strapdown devices that are rigidly fixed in space relative to one another. Each device includes two two-axis gyroscopes, permitting the generation of triple redundancy. The measurement axes (M 11 , M 12 and M 21 , M 22 ) have different arrangements in the horizontal plane. The redundant axis of each strapdown device is arranged in such a way (preferably at 45 degrees) that an allocation to the two horizontal measurement axes is provided by computational transformation.

Apparatus for redundant axis stabilization and control of an aircraft

A redundant inertial measuring system includes three strapdown platforms each having two inertial sensors. The sensitive axes of the sensors are discretely disposed relative to the faces of a dodecahedron. The sensors and their associated electronics are physically and electrically separated from each other within each of the platforms.

Redundant inertial measurement system configuration

A redundant inertial measuring system includes at least two gimballed platforms each stabilized by at least three gyros. Means are provided for detecting excessive drift in at least one of the gyros and for eliminating the defective unit or units from control of the system. A particular feature of the invention is that all gimballed platforms are mechanically identical, and therefore interchangeable.

Michael Epstein

Papers

Redundant inertial measurement system configuration

Redundant inertial measurement system with improved failure-detection capability

Messeinrichtung fuer redundante traegheitsnavigationsanlagen