Singular Value Decomposition Approach to Observability Analysis of GPS/INS

Singular value decomposition (SDV) approach is applied to the observability analysis of GPS/INS in this paper. A measure of observability for a subspace is introduced. It indicates the minimum size of perturbation in the information matrix that makes the subspace unobservable. It is shown that the measure has direct connections with observability of systems, error covariance, and singular structure of the information matrix. The observability measure given in this paper is applicable to the multi-input/multi-output time-varying systems. An example on the observability analysis of GPS/INS is given. The measure of observability is confirmed to be less sensitive to system model perturbation. It is also shown that the estimation error for the vertical component of gyro bias can be considered unobservable for small initial error covariance for a constant velocity horizontal motion.