Efforts Toward Design, Development and Implementation of an Integrated and Flexible Support System for Calibration of Air Data Attitude Heading Reference Systems

Abstract

An Air Data Attitude Heading Reference System is a device that provides a modern day Aircraft with altitude, air-speed, attitude, and magnetic parameters. A typical ADAHRS contains a number of tightly integrated sensors to sense the various operating variables required to compute these parameters. The operation of ADAHRS greatly depends on the accuracy of measurements made by its sensor systems. When deployed for use, the accuracy of sensors is affected due to various error sources. These errors may be induced due to the inherent characteristics of sensors themselves or due to the ambient conditions the sensors operate in. It is important that the characteristics of these error sources are well understood and their effects mitigated using suitable correction and compensation schemes. In a typical ADAHRS production environment each ADAHRS unit has to be individually calibrated and tested to ensure its accuracy within its rated operating limits. The work presented in this thesis provides a commercially deployable calibration support system that provides an enabling framework for production line calibration, and acceptance testing of Air Data Attitude Heading Reference Systems.