Assessment of IMU Quality Requirements in Integrated Quantum Inertial Navigation Systems

This work presents an approach to assess the quality requirements for classical inertial measurement units (IMU) used in conjunction with a cold atom interferometer (CAI) for application in a hybrid quantum inertial navigations system (QINS). Based on the steady state formulation of an extended Kalman filter used for the hybridization of CAI and IMU, a model for the sensitivity gain of the QINS over the classical IMU is developed. This sensitivity gain depends on the white noise density of the classical sensor, as well as the scale factor and the signal-to-noise ratio of the CAI. Using the example of a single hybridized accelerometer axis it can be shown that for each CAI setting, an optimal white noise density of the classical accelerometer exists for which the sensitivity gain of the QINS yields a maximum. The findings are applied to evaluate existing experimental assemblies.