Evaluation of a Low Cost Tactical Grade MEMS IMU for Maritime Navigation

The paper evaluates the performance of a tactical grade MicroElectroMechanical System (MEMS) Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) with respect to possible application for maritime navigation. The evaluation is based on a measurement campaign on the ferry vessel Mecklenburg Vorpommern, where both a MEMS IMU and a reference Fiber Optical Gyroscope (FOG) based IMU were installed. The evaluation concentrates not only on the provision of a backup functionality for GNSS based heading and position determination, but also on the usage of a MEMS IMU for the integrity monitoring for GNSS faults using a tightly-coupled IMU/GNSS integration scheme.