This book is about aerospace sensors, their principles of operation, and their typical advantages, shortcomings, and vulnerabilities. They are described in the framework of the subsystems where they function and in accordance with the flight mission they are designed to serve. The book is intended for students at the advanced undergraduate or graduate level and for research engineers who need to acquire this kind of knowledge. An effort has been made to explain, within a uniform framework of mathematical modeling, the physics upon which a certain sensor concept is based, its construction, its dynamics, and its error sources and their corresponding mathematical models. Equipped with such knowledge and understanding, the student or research engineer should be able to get involved in research and development activities of guidance, control, and navigation systems and to contribute to the initiation of novel ideas in the aerospace sensor field. As a designer and systems engineer, he should be able to correctly interpret the various items in a technical data list and thus to interact intelligently with manufacturers' representatives and other members of an R & D team. Much of the text has evolved from undergraduate and graduate courses given by the author during the past seventeen years at the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Technion- Israel Institute of Technology and from his earlier research and development experience in flight control, guidance, navigation, and avionics at the Ministry of Defense Central Research Institute This book is about aerospace sensors and their essential roles in guidance and navigation systems. Performance characteristics, developed from basic physical laws, are consolidated in typical product-data lists, thus bridging between theory and practice; sensor dynamics and random processes are discussed as the basis of statistical error modeling. Examples, problems, and qualitative discussions are used throughout the text to enhance intuitive understanding. The first two chapters introduce generic sensor models, random signal processing, and filtering and estimation; they thus provide a common basis for students from diverse backgrounds. The seven chapters that follow cover three generations of sensor technology spanning fifty years, ranging from classical electromechanical sensors for rotation and force to modern fiber-optic gyros and silicon micromechanical devices. Sensors are presented as constituents of systems in which measurements are blended by Kalman filtering to achieve superior precision and reliability and lower cost. Effects of noise and interference, for example on automatic tracking, homing and inertial navigation, are analyzed and discussed in detail. Front Matter....Pages i-xxii Introduction and historical background....Pages 1-4 Principles and Elements of Measurement Systems....Pages 5-63 Random Processes and Signals....Pages 64-138 Inertial Force Sensors — Accelerometers....Pages 139-185 Inertial Rotation Sensors....Pages 186-271 Applications of Rate Gyros....Pages 272-324 Coriolis Angular Rate Sensors....Pages 325-348 The Interferometric Fiber-Optic Gyro....Pages 349-376 The Ring Laser Gyro....Pages 377-394 Filtering, Estimation, and Aiding....Pages 395-448 Back Matter....Pages 449-454
