Auxiliary Gyroscope Approach for Balanced Performance via Gyro Self-Calibration

Gyro noise and bias are often performance limitingfactors in space and terrestrial navigation systems, especiallyin cases where no aiding sensors are available. A gyro unitwith good performance in both noise and bias may be veryexpensive and with undesirable SWaP. In this paper, we proposeto make use of the self-calibrating capabilities of an inexpensiveMEMS Coriolis Vibratory Gyros (CVG) gyro as an auxiliarysensor for a set of primary gyros of any type, including thosenot capable of self-calibrating, to greatly reduce the biases ofthe primary and auxiliary gyros, as the primary gyros’ biasescan all be made observable and calibratable using the auxiliaryCVG’s self-calibration capability in real-time without impactingthe normal use of the primary gyros. The combined gyro systemcan therefore retain the good noise performance of the primarygyros while greatly improving on its bias stability performance.