Effects on Inertial Guidance Systems of Random Error Sources

Random process theory is applied to a number of typical problems encountered in the error analysis of inertial guidance systems and in the design of optimum error predicting filters for such systems. The applications of random process theory include: Measurement of system error autocovariance functions. An example of the measurement of a random drift rate process, constructed by the uniformly distributed sampling of a deterministic periodic function, is treated in detail. Estimation of velocity and position errors due to such basic error sources as gyro drift rate and accelerometer null shift. Design of optimum prediction filters for drift rate, attitude, velocity and position and for minimization of target miss distance. Treatment of hybrid inertial system error as a gated random process. The specific example is taken of drift angle increase between Poisson-distributed correction intervals for a Doppler inertial system.