Multi-Instance Inertial Navigation System for Radar Terrain Imaging

Abstract

Navigation systems used for the motion correction (MOCO) of radar terrain images have several limitations, including the maximum duration of the measurement session, the time duration of the synthetic aperture, and only focusing on minimizing long-term positioning errors of the radar host. To overcome these limitations, a novel, multi-instance inertial navigation system (MINS) has been proposed by the authors. In this approach, the classic inertial navigation system (INS), which works from the beginning to the end of the measurement session, was replaced by short INS instances. The initialization of each INS instance is performed using an INS/GPS system and is triggered by exceeding the positioning error of the currently operating instance. According to this procedure, both INS instances operate simultaneously. The parallel work of the instances is performed until the image line can be calculated using navigation data originating only from the new instance. The described mechanism aims to perform instance switching in a manner that does not disturb the initial phases of echo signals processed in a single aperture. The obtained results indicate that the proposed method improves the imaging quality compared to the methods using the classic INS or the INS/GPS system.