MATLAB Implementation of Allan Variance

Resource Overview

Complete source code for calculating Allan variance, including algorithm implementation for inertial navigation system error analysis

Detailed Documentation

Allan variance is a widely used method for analyzing errors in inertial navigation systems. The calculation of Allan variance requires specialized source code implementation. For users needing to compute Allan variance, this MATLAB code provides a complete solution that processes time-series data from inertial sensors (gyroscopes or accelerometers) to generate Allan deviation plots. The implementation typically involves parsing sensor data files, computing overlapping cluster variances using different averaging time intervals, and generating log-log plots to identify various noise characteristics like angle random walk, bias instability, and rate random walk. Key functions include data segmentation, variance calculation across multiple tau values, and proper visualization techniques for interpreting different error sources in inertial measurement units.