In-Flight Calibration Approach Based on Quaternion Optimization for POS Used in Airborne Remote Sensing

The position and orientation system (POS) is a key technology which provides motion compensation information for an imaging sensor in airborne remote sensing. But the POS accuracy decreases with time as gyroscope bias excursion as time flows, in-flight calibration is the most convenient way to solve this problem to the users, but the existing methods are mostly based on Kalman filter, the effect of them to estimate the bias error isn´ t reliable enough as affected severely by global position system measurement error and model error. A novel airborne POS in-flight calibration approach based on quaternion optimization is devised in this paper, which adds the factor of attitude error promulgation by gyroscope bias error into the algorithm, and gyroscope bias error is recognized by parse analysis. Simulations and flight experiments demonstrated that, with the proposed algorithm, the gyroscope bias error can be recognized in acceptable precision.