Application of optimal smoothing to the testing and evaluation of inertial navigation systems and components

Optimal smoothing is applied to the problem of the testing and evaluation of inertial navigation systems at both the component and systems level. The areas studied are gyro testing, system testing in the laboratory, component failure detection during a mission, and post-mission system evaluation. In each case, the problem is cast into the optimal smoothing formalism and preliminary numerical results are obtained. Results reflecting both ideal and practical conditions are presented.