Integrity Monitored Four Axis Inertial Measurement Unit

Objective

Develop the theoretical and simulation baseline for a redundant four-axis inertial measurement unit with real-time integrity monitoring and declared performance degradation.

Technical scope

• Optimize tetrahedral accelerometer and angular-rate sensor geometry.
• Develop quaternion-based kinematics without gimbal lock or polar singularities.
• Derive redundant-sensor fault detection, isolation and integrity metrics.
• Simulate navigation performance, sensor failures and degradation before hardware realization.

Expected deliverables

• Four-axis IMU mathematical model
• Quaternion navigation and redundant-sensor solution
• Integrity-monitoring framework
• Simulation evidence and hardware-development requirements

About the GSDM project

Aircraft depend on GPS and Galileo every second they fly, and GNSS jamming and spoofing have become a real, daily threat to aviation around the world. GSDM is a multi-year research program led by ÉTS in partnership with the avionics manufacturer CMC Electronics, and funded through an NSERC and CRIAQ collaborative R&D grant. Its goal is to detect, mitigate and recover from GNSS jamming and spoofing in aviation receivers, and to help write the standards that will certify that equipment. As a GSDM student, you will work on problems that matter to real aircraft, alongside the industry engineers who build certified avionics. Your work will be tested on simulators, software-defined radios and real receiver data, and it can feed directly into international standards such as RTCA Appendix W. The program spans signal processing, detection theory, estimation, integrity monitoring, inertial navigation and systems engineering. Whether you like mathematics, algorithms or hands-on laboratory work, there is a project that will challenge you and prepare you for a career in aerospace, navigation or defence. We are looking for curious, rigorous and motivated students who want their research to make flying safer.