A Rigorous Approach for IMU Boresight Misalignment Calibration

This paper focuses on a new approach for the calibration of IMU misalignment angles. Firstly the rigorous mathematic model of IMU misalignment describing the relationship among IMU output angles, misalignments and exterior orientation angular elements is discussed, then one-step and two-step these two fundamental calibration methods are introduced. According to the idea of two-step calibration a rigorous approach based on linearized misalignment math model is proposed, which is then tested using actual calibration flight data of Applanix DSS camera. Experimental results show that this rigorous method can obtain better accuracy than traditional simplified misalignment model based on antisysmmetric matrix. It is more adaptive and has no limitation on the magnitude of misalignment angles.