This project is at the boundary of antennas, RF circuits, RF systems, analog circuits, and MEMS. Personal navigation, especially in GPS-denied environments remains one of the major challenges for navigation technology. A promising approach is inertial measurement units (IMUs) made of MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes. Inherent inaccuracies in such low-cost, miniaturized MEMS sensors can be reduced using zero-velocity updates. In this project, off-the-shelf MEMS sensors will be studied to identify limitations of this technology for highly-accurate long-term navigation in GPS-denied environments. The proposed sensor system will include 3-axis IMU (6 DOF) and 3-axis magnetometers that are mounted on both shoes of a pedestrian. Data from both shoe-mounted sensors will be fused with zero-velocity updates to determine the accuracy limits of this technology.
