Harmonization of a multi-sensor navigation system

We address the problem of harmonization of two subsystems used separately to measure a velocity in a body reference frame and an attitude with respect to an inertial frame. This general problem is of particular importance when the two subsystems are jointly used to obtain an estimate of the inertial velocity, and, then, the position through an integration procedure. Typical possible applications encompass pedestrian navigation, and, more generally, indoor navigation. The paper demonstrates how harmonization can be achieved thanks to an analysis of propagation of projection errors. In particular, trajectories known to be closed can be used to determine one dominant harmonization factor which is the pitch relative orientation angle between the two subsystems. Computations yielding the harmonization procedure are exposed in this article, and experimental data serve to illustrate the application of the proposed method.