Proceedings of 2014 IEEE Chinese Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference August 8-10, 2014 Yantai, China

Applications of Zero-velocity Detector and Kalman Filter in

Zero Velocity Update for Inertial Navigation System

Li Xiaofang, Mao Yuliang, Xie Ling, Chen Jiabin, Song Chunlei

Abstract—Zero velocity update (ZUPT) is an inexpensive and
effective method for error control of inertial navigation system
(INS). Detecting the stopping time interval is important for
ZUPT methods. The ZUPT method based on Kalman filter has
a higher degree of precision compared with the ZUPT method
based on curve fitting and the ZUPT method based on
maximum likelihood estimation, but the modeling of Kalman
filter is critical for the performance of INS. In this paper, three
kinds of zero-velocity detectors and a linear discrete Kalman
filter model are applied in ZUPT for INS. Simulation results
show that the three kinds of zero-velocity detectors are effective,
and the ZUPT method based on the linear discrete Kalman filter
model makes the positioning accuracy of INS significantly
improved.
Key words— ZUPT, zero-velocity detector, Kalman filter
I. INTRODUCTION
Zero velocity update (ZUPT) plays a crucial role in land use
inertial navigation system (INS), and it is one of major
techniques of error suppression and compensation for
high-precision positioning and orientation system[1-3]. There
are many methods for ZUPT, for example, curve fitting
method, maximum likelihood estimation method and Kalman
filter method[4]. Models of the ZUPT methods based on
curve fitting and maximum likelihood estimation are simple
and have a strong dependence on the time interval between the
two stopping points of INS, as a result, the two methods have a
lower degree of precision. The ZUPT method based on
Kalman filter is an unbiased estimate with a linear minimum
variance. It can reduce the effect of the noise of the speed error
observation, thus has a higher degree of precision.
No matter which ZUPT method is used, detection of the
stopping time intervals of INS is very important. If INS is
mistakenly detected as being stationary when it is moving, it
will bring a very bad influence on the precision of navigation
result. When the state dimension of the system is high, the
precision of the outputs descends and the estimated value of
the filter diffuses easily. In order to solve the two problems,
three zero-velocity detectors named acceleration moving
variance detector ,acceleration magnitude detector, and
angular rate energy detector for detecting the stopping time
interval s of INS and a linear discrete Kalman filter model are
applied for ZUPT. Simulation results show that the detectors
and the model applied both have a good feasibility.
*Resrach supported by National Natural Science Foundation (NNSF) of
China under grant #90920304.
II. ZERO-VELOCITY DETECTOR
Carrying out the ZUPT methods of INS needs detecting
the stopping time intervals (ZUPT points) of INS accurately,
which is the crucial point to fit the position error of INS by the
ZUPT method based on curve fitting and gain the
measurement noise of INS by the ZUPT method based on
Kalman filter. Consequently, the probability of wrongly
detecting the ZUPT points should be reduced to the minimum.
Qingqi Feng proposes that the ZUPT points should be
determined by the output data of the accelerometers: if the
difference between the sum of the maximum output of the
three accelerometers and the sum of the minimum output of
the three accelerometers during six seconds is less than
2
0.002 m / s , then the point is considered as a ZUPT
point[5]. At the moment, the method to detect the ZUPT point
is formulated according to the data of the inertial measurement
unit (IMU), and there is no a uniformed ZUPT detection
method. In order to solve the problem, three zero-velocity
detectors named acceleration moving variance detector,
acceleration magnitude detector, and angular rate energy
detector for detecting the stopping points of INS are applied
in the following.
The objective of the zero-velocity detection is to decide
whether, during a time epoch consisting of N observations
between the time instants n and n+N-1, the IMU is moving or
stationary, given the measurement
 { yk }k = n
n + N −1
sequence zn .
Mathematically, we can formalize the detection problem as
a binary hypothesis testing problem, where the detector can
choose between the two hypotheses H0 and H1 ,which defined
as follows[6]:
H0: IMU is moving.
H1: IMU is stationary.
A. Sensor Model
The IMU output can be described as follows[6]:
yk = sk (θ ) + vk (1)
ª s (θ ) º
a
ªv º a
Where sk (θ ) = « ω » and vk = « ω » .
k k

Li Xiaofang is with School of Automation, Beijing Institute of

Technology, Beijing 100081, China (phone:
¬ sk (θ ) ¼ ¬vk ¼
ω
Here, sk (θ ) ∈ \ and sk (θ ) ∈ \
a 3 3
15101116631;email:lixiaofanglady@126.com). denote the
Mao Yuliang is with School of Automation, Beijing Institute of
Technology, Beijing 100081, China (email: maoyuliangready@163.com). IMU-experienced specific force and angular rate,

978-1-4799-4699-0/14/$31.00©2014 IEEE 1760

respectively. Further, θ denotes the set of unknown φ = φ × ωinn + δωinn − δωibn (6)
parameters needed to describe the signals. Moreover,
Where, ω is the projection of the angular velocity of the
n

vka (θ ) ∈ \3 and vkω (θ ) ∈ \ 3 denote the noise associated

in
navigation coordinate system relative to the inertial
with the accelerometer and the gyroscope, respectively. We coordinate system in the navigation coordinate system,
will assume that the noise is independent identically
and δωib is the angular velocity measurement error in the n
n
distributed zero-mean, Gaussian with covariance matrix.
frame. The linear velocity error model is:
ªσ 2 I 03×3 º
C = E {vk , v } = « a 3×3T
» (2) δVn =−φ× f n-( 2ωien +ωenn ) ×δVn-( 2δωien +δωenn ) ×Vn +Cbnδ f b (7)
¬ 03×3 σ ω I 3×3 ¼
k 2

Where f is the specific force measured by accelerometer;

Where σ a2 and σ ω2 denote the accelerometer and the
ω is the projection of the angular velocity of the earth
n
gyroscope noise variance, respectively. ie
coordinate system relative to the inertial coordinate system in
B. Acceleration Moving Variance Detector
the navigation coordinate system; ωenn is the projection of the
The acceleration moving variance detector is solely based
upon the output data of the accelerometers and is defined as angular velocity of the navigation coordinate system relative
follows: decide on H1 if to the earth coordinate system in the navigation coordinate
system. The position error model is:
1
¦
2
Tv (z an ) = yka − yna < γv (3) ­  δ VNn
N k ∈Ωn ° δ L =
° RM + h
® (8)
Where Ωn = {l ∈ ` : n ≤ l ≤ N − 1} , zn  yk
a
{ }
a n + N −1
k =n
, °δλ = δ VE sec L
°¯ RN + h
1
yna =
N
¦y
k∈Ωn
a
k . RM and RN represent the curvature radius of the prime
meridian circle and prime vertical circle respectively.
C. Acceleration Magnitude Detector The state variable of 7 dimensions is chosen as
x = [δ VE , δ VN , ϕ E , ϕ N , ϕU , δ L, δλ ] and the horizontal velocity
The acceleration magnitude detector checks whether the
measured specific force vector is close to g. If it is the case, it error δ VE and δ VN are chosen as measurement variables.
can be concluded that the IMU is stationary[6]. Hence, the state space model is obtained as follows:
­ x (t ) = Fx(t ) + w(t )
¦( )
1 2
Tm (z na ) = yka − g < γm (4)
® (9)
σ a2 N k∈Ωn
¯ Z k = HX k + Vk
D. Angular Rate Energy Detector ª F1 05×2 º
Sometimes, only the energy in the gyroscope signal is used Where F =« » ˈ
to detect when the IMU is stationary[6]. The angular rate ¬ F 2 02×2 ¼
energy detector decides on H1 if ª 0 2ωie sin L 0 −g 0 º
« −2ω sin L »
1 0 g 0 0
¦
2
« »
Tω (zωn ) = ykω < γω
ie
(5) F1 = « 0 0 0 ωie sin L −ωie cos L »
N k∈Ωn « »
« 0 0 −ωie sin L 0 0 »
 { ykω }
ω n + N −1
Where zn . «¬ 0 0 ωie cos L 0 0 »¼
k =n
ª 1 º
III. DESIGN OF THE LINEAR DISCRETE KALMAN FILTER « 0 RM + h
0 0 0»
F2 = « »,
The state variables of Kalman filter in the following « sec L »
contain the velocity errors, the attitude angle errors and the «R +h 0 0 0 0»
position errors. The error model of INS is linear discrete, then ¬ N ¼
the state equations can be deduced by the error model. ª1 0 0 0 0 0 0º
Hk = « .
Compared with the high-dimension Kalman filter model, it
¬0 1 0 0 0 0 0 »¼
has a higher degree of approximation when the filter period is
short. Consequently, the precision of the estimated error is
higher. The dimension of the filter equations is lowered and IV. SIMULATIONS AND DISCUSSIONS
the calculating time for filtering is reduced. As a result, it has
A. Zero-velocity Detection Simulation
a practical value. The model is described in the following.
A geographic coordinate system (east-north-up) is selected The experiment is carried out at latitude 30.44620062e
as the navigation coordinate system. The linear attitude error north, 114.4762434 e east, with the INS loaded on a land
model is: vehicle. The random drift of the ring laser gyroscope is

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0.005o/h, and the bias stability of the accelerometer x 10
5 Acceleration moving variance detector test statistics
12
is 50 μ g .INS keeps stationary for half of an hour, during
which the initial alignment is carried out. Then INS goes 10
along the route shown in Fig.1 and stops every 5 minutes with
parking for 2 minutes. The sampling rate of IMU is 200HZ. 8

T v (zan)
Vehicle route 6
30.5

4
30.49

2
30.48
Latitude(deg)

0
30.47 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Sampling point 5
x 10

30.46
Figure 3.The test statistics of the acceleration moving variance detector

x 10
5 Acceleration magnitude detector test statistics
30.45 7

30.44 6
114.46 114.48 114.5 114.52 114.54 114.56 114.58 114.6 114.62 114.64 114.66
Longitude(deg)
5
Figure 1.The vehicle route
T m (zan) 4
The original gyroscope and accelerometer signals are
shown in Fig.2. 3

Accelerometer measurements
2
0.15
Velocity increment(m/s)

x-axis
1
0.1 y-axis
z-axis
0.05 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Sampling point x 10
5
0
Figure 4.The test statistics of the acceleration magnitude detector
-0.05
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Sampling point x 10
5
4 Angular rate energy detector test statistics
Angular rate increment(deg)

-3 Gyroscope measurements x 10
x 10 5
2
x-axis
1 y-axis
z-axis
4
0

-1 3
T (zn )

-2
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Sampling point 5 2
x 10
Figure 2.The gyroscope and accelerometer signals
1

Zero-velocity detections are carried out on Matlab for the

0
acceleration moving variance detector, the acceleration 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
magnitude detector, and the angular rate energy detector Sampling point x 10
5

respectively. The detection results are shown in Fig.3, Fig.4, Figure 5.The test statistics of the angular rate energy detector
and Fig.5 respectively.
Comparing Fig.3, Fig.4 and Fig.5 with Fig.2 respectively,
the conclusion can be given out that all three detectors can
detect the ZUPT points accurately. By setting different
threshold values, whether the vehicle is stationary or not can
be figured out. Consequently, all three detectors have good
performances.
B. Simulation of the ZUPT Method Based on the Linear
Discrete Kalman Filter
With ZUPT points detected by the zero-velocity detectors,
simulation of the ZUPT method utilized with the linear

1762
discrete Kalman filter is carried out on Matlab in the navigation result
30.495
following. The initial state x0 is set all zeroes; the covariance 30.49
matrix of initial state errors P0 , the covariance of process 30.485

noise Qk and the covariance of measurement noise Rk are 30.48 GPS

SINS
initialized as follows: 30.475 30.494 ZUPT

latitude/deg
P0 = diag{(0.1m / s)2 ,(0.1m / s)2 ,(1D )2 ,(1D )2 , 30.47
30.493

D 2 2 2 30.465
(10 ) ,(100 / Re) ,(100 / Re) } 30.492
30.46
where Re represents the radius of the earth.
30.455 30.491

Qk −1 = diag{(5 × 10−5 g ) 2 , (5 × 10−5 g ) 2 , (0.01D / h) 2 ,

114.5105 114.511 114.5115 114.512 114.5125

30.45
(0.01D / h) 2 , (0.01D / h) 2 , 0,0} 30.445

Rk = diag{(0.01m / s ) , (0.01m / s ) } .
2 2 114.48 114.5 114.52 114.54 114.56 114.58 114.6 114.62 114.64
longitude/deg

Navigation results with and without ZUPT method are
shown in Fig. 6. GPS, INS and ZUPT respectively stand for
the GPS position, the computed position of INS without
ZUPT method and the computed position of INS with the
ZUPT method based on the linear discrete Kalman filter.
Coordinates of the end points are respectively:
GPS (30.4916443277, 114.6378284972),
INS (30.4866850064, 114.6362796386),
ZUPT (30.4907967306, 114.6373811354).
The longitude and latitude errors of the end points are
shown in Tab. I.
TABLE I. POSITIONING ERRORS OF END POINTS
Errors INS
longitude error(m) -103.5679
latitude error(m) -550.4847
From the simulation results, it can be concluded that the
positioning accuracy of INS with the ZUPT method based on
the linear discrete Kalman filter is much higher than INS
without ZUPT method. Hence, the effectiveness of the linear
discrete Kalman filter is proved.
Figure 6.Comparison of navigation results of INS with and without ZUPT
V. CONCLUSIONS
As the INS error diverges over time, the ZUPT method is
adopted as an effective way for error elimination.Three
different zero-velocity detectors named acceleration moving
variance detector, acceleration magnitude detector, and
angular rate energy detector for detecting the stopping time
intervals of INS and a linear discrete Kalman filter model are
applied for ZUPT. Simulation results show that the
zero-velocity detectors applied can produce reliable detection
results by setting appropriate threshold values,and the linear
discrete Kalman filter applied can reduce the positioning error
of INS dramatically.
ZUPT
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-29.9139
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